A Bronx Tale: The Musical
Opening Night: December 1, 2016
Closing: April 2, 2017
Theater: Longacre Theatre
A Bronx Tale is a streetwise musical that takes you to the stoops of the Bronx in the 1960s—where a young man is caught between the father he loves and the mob boss he’d love to be. Featuring a doo-wop score, A Bronx Tale is a story about respect, loyalty, love, and above all else: family.
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December 1, 2016
In his self-help book “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” Robert Kiyosaki outlines the competing pull of two father figures in his young life — one was staid, honest and boring, the other street-smart, savvy and exciting. The financial establishment mostly turned up its nose at the book, calling it bogus, trite and cliched. It sold more than 26 million copies anyway. There is a lesson there for the fate of “A Bronx Tale,” which opened Thursday night at the Longacre Theatre under the direction of Robert De Niro and the ever-wily Jerry Zaks, a reminder that for all the reinvention and diversification embraced by Broadway, there remains a formidable out-of-town demand for new Broadway musicals in which nothing whatsoever has changed at all. Broadway is not unlike a boomerang, always coming back to the regular customers.
READ THE REVIEWDecember 1, 2016
The main takeaway of the new Broadway musical “A Bronx Tale” is that talent is a terrible thing to waste. The show’s makers and shapers, including Chazz Palminteri, who adapted his 1989 play, and Robert De Niro, who starred in and helmed the ‘93 film version and now shares directing credit with theater veteran Jerry Zaks, haven’t squandered their gifts. But they haven’t dug especially deep in the imagination department, either. “A Bronx Tale” at the Longacre Theatre packs some tasty ear candy and fine performances, but it’s as conventional as it gets and could use a surprise or two.
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December 1, 2016
The characters are simple, the storytelling is derivative of better-known musicals (“West Side Story,” “Jersey Boys”) and the tone is excessively sentimental and solemn. But “A Bronx Tale,” the new Broadway musical based upon actor-writer Chazz Palminteri’s coming of age in an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx of the 1960s, is nevertheless an entertaining crowd-pleaser and a poignant piece of theater. If it works, it works. “A Bronx Tale” began as a one-man show performed by Palminteri. It was subsequently made into a 1993 film starring Palminteri and Robert De Niro (who directed the film and now serves as the musical’s co-director).
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December 1, 2016
Robert De Niro and Jerry Zaks co-direct this musical version of Chazz Palminteri’s one-man play about growing up in an Italian-American neighborhood, also turned into a 1993 film. Chazz Palminteri’s A Bronx Tale seems to have had more than nine lives. First performed as a solo piece in Los Angeles and off-Broadway in 1989 by the then-unknown writer-performer, it was revived on Broadway in 2007. Palminteri has toured with it off-and-on ever since, and co-starred in the 1993 film adaptation with Robert DeNiro, who also directed.
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December 1, 2016
Sometimes plain old pasta with red sauce is just what the doctor ordered. “A Bronx Tale,” which opened at the Longacre Theater on Broadway on Thursday, might be called the musical-theater equivalent of that classic comfort food. It doesn’t break ground or dazzle with an unusual recipe — like, say, mixing rap and American history — but it delivers reliable pleasures with polished professionalism and infectious energy. Chazz Palminteri wrote the book, which was adapted from his solo play. More may know the material from the movie version, starring Mr. Palminteri and Robert De Niro, and directed by Mr. De Niro, who shares that chore here with the veteran Jerry Zaks. All told, Mr. Palminteri, who revived his original 1989 solo show on Broadway in 2007, has made a profitable career, and provided much entertainment to audiences, repackaging (albeit loosely) his upbringing in an Italian-American enclave in the Bronx.
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