Portuguese Kid
Opening Night: October 24, 2017
Closing: December 3, 2017
Theater: MTC - Stage I
In Providence, Rhode Island, habitually widowed Atalanta (Sherie Rene Scott) pays a visit to her second-rate lawyer Barry Dragonetti (Jason Alexander). Intending to settle her latest husband’s affairs, this larger-than-life Greek tightwad quickly becomes a nightmare for her cheesy, self-aggrandizing attorney. Add Barry’s impossible Croatian mother (Mary Testa), a dash of current politics and a couple of opportunistic young lovers, and you have in hand a recipe for comic combustion. This feisty romantic comedy could only come from John Patrick Shanley, the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the MTC hits Doubt and Outside Mullingar, and the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Moonstruck.
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October 24, 2017
According to the program, John Patrick Shanley’s comedy “The Portuguese Kid” takes place “a few weeks ago.”
That’s only three decades off.
To judge by smell, it really takes place in 1987, when “Moonstruck,” with a screenplay by Mr. Shanley, was released. That’s because “The Portuguese Kid,” which opened Tuesday night in a high-wattage, low-return Manhattan Theater Club production, is another slice of the same pizza pie.
Unless it’s moussaka: The play’s sexy widowed heroine is Greek, not Italian like the sexy widowed heroine of the movie. Also making no difference is the fact that Atalanta, as this widow is improbably called, is 50, whereas the movie’s Loretta is 37. Either way the world is old and the jokes are ancient.
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