William Mastrosimone’s “A Stone Carver” is a play constructed of very humble, cheap and recycled material; yet it has an abundance of what its resolutely Italian hero refers to as true amore, and it’s played with such skill in its Midwest premiere by American Theater Company that it wins you over with the sheer pleasure of its performance.
There’s hardly an original situation in the drama, which, though it runs only 90 minutes without intermission, is packed with a complete dictionary of dramatic cliches, Italian-American variety.
At the start of the action, Augustino, a cantankerous old stone carver with an Old World morality and a spaghetti accent from way back, is holed up in his house with his Caruso records and a rifle, defying all efforts by the state to level his home for a new expressway.
Enter his son, Raff, short for Rafaelo, an ambitious young man who has long since given up the manly sweat of stone carving for the suit-and-tie maneuverings of business and politics.
Raff, who has, what else?, a love-hate relationship with his feisty old man, is accompanied on his visit by his sweetheart, Janice, a cool blond beauty. She’s not Italian, but, sure enough, she quickly endears herself to the crusty old widower as they share a bottle of homemade vino.
Janice tries to act as a peacemaker between hide-bound dad and rebellious son, but it doesn’t work. If Raff says one thing, his dad puts it down or says the opposite. “You don’t talk to him,” fumes Raff. “You listen.”
Not until a bit of domestic violence has erupted do father and son finally come to some sort of agreement; and even then, as the voice of Caruso rises and the lights dim, it’s a sad ending for poor old Augustino.
None of this would be believable for a moment if John Mohrlein as Augustino, Stef Tovar as Raff and Dawn Bach as Janice weren’t so fine in their portrayals.
In director William Payne’s carefully orchestrated staging, they find and deliver every bit of truth and compassion in this early, semi-autobiographical Mastrosimone play.
Mohrlein, an actor who can overplay with the best of them, keeps himself in superb control here. He gets all the laughs in his “son-a-ma-bitch” jokes, but he’s never out of character as the entrapped, lonely and frightened man who lives beneath the bravado.
One moment, in which Augustino dreams of his dead wife while the voice of Caruso swells to fill the whole auditorium, is magical.
Tovar, well-matched physically as Augustino’s son, complements Mohrlein’s explosiveness with a very strong portrayal of dead serious determination and simmering resentment. And Bach, given a B-movie role as the girlfriend, invests it with sex and smarts.
This is a fine production, well-crafted in every way and strengthened by the intense work of its director and actors.
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“A Stone Carver”
When: Through Oct. 5
Where: American Theater Company, 3855 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: 773-929-1031
