Hilarious Comedy Helps Tell Immigrants' Story
Hands, photo by Joshua Hoehne, Unsplash
American Nick has two sets of Italian grandparents. That means he receives plenty of home cooked meals and advice. His Grandmas and Grandpas, having come from Italy in the early 1900s, can't understand why Nick would even consider moving across the U.S. for his sales career. Leaving them behind.
“Aren't we worth staying for?”
Well, the play is certainly worth the price ($25) of admission, at the Brown County Playhouse. It opens April 7.
Over the River and Through the Woods by Joe DiPietro (the talented man who also wrote the musical I Love You, You're Perfect. Now Change) is a hilarious—and moving—peek into how generations perceive each other.
Grandpa: “He's going to Seattle, for what? Just a job.”
Nick: “I want to live my life the way I want to . . . not dating the relatives of my Nanny's canasta partner!”
Stephen Planalp plays Nick, photo by Tom Preston
Picture of Stephen Planalp as Nick, headshot
Anyone who has read another immigrant story, Pietro Di Donato's wondrous brief novel Christ in Concrete (1939,) will notice similarities between it and DiPietro's play Over the River and Through the Woods.
Di Donato's novel details Italian-American construction workers and made him a well known name immediately. Many called it the ultimate working-class novel about immigrants in America, told in a believable writing style, of an Italian-American bricklayer.
A man surviving his father’s most unpleasant death while mixing concrete has stayed with me for these 15 years since I read the work. That death changes the son, understandably, and his revelation breaks family bonds. It made me think about Indiana's laborers from India, Africa, China. What are their modern, Westernizing children seeing and deciding?
Christ in Concrete is heavy, where Over the River is light, with heavy spots. Both tell us about what it can be like to be the child of an immigrant, but River lets us laugh, sometimes with uproar.
Picture of Over the River flier
See "Over the River and Through the Woods" by Joe DiPietro at the Brown County Playhouse, 70 S. Van Buren St., Nashville, Ind., (812) 988-6555, https://browncountyplayhouse.org/events/. Apr. 7, 8 and Apr. 14-16. Two matinees—Apr. 8 and 16. Tickets are $25, general admission.
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