Mambo Italiano

Ian C. Nelson, Librarian Emeritus, former Assistant Director of
Libraries (University of Saskatchewan) and dramaturge (Festival de la
Dramaturgie des Prairies).

Playwright, film, and TV scriptwriter Steve Galluccio became the 1990s
darling of the Montreal Fringe Festival with his gonzo theatre:
fast-paced, comic, full of popular art and local references, and often
exuding a gay sensibility. In 2000, Michel Tremblay read his Mambo
Italiano, quickly translated the play into French, and opened it at the
Jean Duceppe Theatre where it became a phenomenal success. The English
version has toured Canada to great acclaim.

While inevitably evoking comparisons to My Big Fat Greek Wedding with
its broad ethnic stereotypes, Mambo Italiano waves a serious thematic
banner of self-acceptance above the elaborate Italian histrionics
provoked when the family scion announces that he is gay: “there is no
fate worse than being gay and Italian.”

Substitute “oy veh” for “Madonna mia” and knishes for
cannelloni and Mambo Italiano appears at first shout to be the work of
an emerging Neil Simon. Clearly there is already a mastery of classic
sitcom humour: hilarious situations, incisive one-liners,
lightning-laugh-out-loud comic switches, and, above all, screamingly
funny observations of universal family traits in their peculiar ethnic
clothes.

At first Galluccio is so generously entertaining that one cannot help
wonder if he will be able to keep up the pace and the laughter or if the
evening will gradually outstay its welcome and begin repeating itself.
Then, some 20 pages before the end of Act I, he brings all the
characters together in the same room and begins delivering the real
emotional goods. It is a coup that proves his is a mature talent
carefully balancing human comedy with social truth in the best tradition
of Moliиre, Sheridan, George Walker, and—yes—vintage Neil Simon.
Galluccio has followed up the success of Mambo Italiano with the French
comedy series Ciao bella.