Word: mama
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STILL, the balloons bounce on. After an introduction to Cafe Ole, the action moves to a living room done in Italian kitsch, with marble busts of pizza chefs. Gangleader Don Ianmarie (Andrew Gardner '89) attempts to allay his Italian mama's concerns with some of the evening's best lines, "Mama mia, calzone, Lamborgini, genitalia, guapo..." He explains that her lust for fine cuisine was handed down from "Grandpapa Domino" and "Great Aunt Regina...
WITH the lagging script, the show could have easily been over before the fat lady sang, but certainly not before the fat ladies bustled about the stage. In line with a nickname for the 1920's--the Age of Red-Hot Mamas--stellar performances by Agent Tess Tosterone and Mama Reeglands (Adam Schwartz '89) make the Pudding show bearable...
...Mama Reeglands is a six-pack of breasts--they are all over, on her hips, her bottom, her stomach. The ones on her chest are reputed to be the largest over in the Pudding's history, and they often seem to move all on their own. Her performance is all in her appearance--with her faint moustache, one long eyebrow, and house-sized black lace dress--but even better is her body language. Shaking her groove thing, or two, comes natural to Mama, as she forcefully swats a bat and lurches her hips in the "Mobster Mash" number...
Nora is a self-centered, live-for-today, would-be dancer (if only Mama and Uncle would give her the chance). Carnesale succeeds in portraying the shortsighted selfishness of her character in the first act, and her depiction of the various emotions of a 17-year-old are well executed through most of the play...
...toss dewy-eyed soul into a line like "I just want to be Mrs. Gavin Grey" -- all ardor, no condescension. She can bear, with a smoldering fuse, the later ordeal of player's wife and baby factory. She can tease Donnie while ironizing her flirtation: "It's every Southern mama's legacy to her daughter." She can seize control of her own life and still stand by her man. Gavin may have embodied, as the film suggests, "everything that the South wanted to believe about itself." But as she matures in this role, Lange comes close to embodying everything...