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Rick Klein ©2025  Kevin Trotta (as Mr. Fanuchi) & Hugh Scully (as Jake Montalto - aka Giacomo

When you open a Playbill to the cast photo page, that a play’s writer-director is listed first (!), one has no option but to roll their eyes. But when a play as rote as Schooling Giacomo unfolds, you start to understand why this became the case. This ultra-broad coming-of-age tale of a teen boy (Jordan Adelson) discovering the mystery of his father’s death while bunking with his loving uncle Dominic (Andrew Lionetti) and his chuckleheaded brothers (Rick Apicella and George Petkanus) is very obviously for a certain type of audience. Those raised on the grand gestures of ethnic comedians as rangy as Jackie Mason to Ray Romano will find much delight in the small details here (the word “gravy” describing spaghetti sauce, assorted Italian slang insults), and once in a while, the aforementioned author-director Richard Edwin Knipe, Jr., finds kernels of tenderness in telling this tale. But the execution has all the subtlety of a polo mallet to the head, letting loose a torrent of Italian-American gesticulation and stereotype one thought The Sopranos put to rest after six seasons on the air.

For the first act, though, Schooling Giacomo has a pulpy pull to it. It begins as a memory play, as an older Giacomo (High Scully), now the father of a ballet dancer teenager (Alanna Heraghty) who suffers from heart diseases and is in dire need of a transplant, fondly remembers his childhood, suffering under an overbearing but ultimately well-meaning drunken mother (Robin Peck) saddled with a loutish thug (Kevin Nagle) who may have had something to do with his father’s death. And he has a pal in the malapropism-spouting neighborhood Goodfella Mr. Fanuchi (Kevin Trotta), who dispenses sensible life-lesson advice to young and old Giacomo, which he takes on well into adulthood. Days at the beach with the uncles (with loud arguments about which diner serves the better sandwiches and which have maxi pad machines) and Giacomo’s nagging concerns with discovering the motivations of his dad’s death ensue, while the elder Giacomo grapples with his daughter’s heart failure, and her refusal to get a transplant.

Rick Klein ©2025  Kevin Trotta (as Mr. Fanuchi) & Jordan Adelson (as Young Giacomo)

Doesn’t all of this sound, well, just a bit familiar“ All it needed was Chazz Palminteri to play every character represented and you’d have a new version of A Bronx Tale, only without any of that play’s warmth or craft. There’s even one scene that seem to come right out of it, when uncle Dominic scolds young Giacomo for commiserating with the neighborhood Don. There is a small twist on this exchange, but it doesn’t keep this (and many other) scenes from giving the viewer a major case of déjà vu. Knipe has coaxed a few engaging performances out of the hard-working cast (Adelson is winning as young Giacomo and Trotta is fun and noticeably restrained), but too many scenes encourage histrionic caterwauling (Heraghty and Peck suffer this fate most especially) and in the second act, it’s very difficult for the viewer to discern what is supposed to be serious and what is comic, as Knipe does not have the faculties to assuage the tone of fairly urgent scenes (a late scene involving a proposed murder is stridently ill-conceived and staged).

Familiarity can be perfectly fine if there is heart involved, and in sporadic doses, it certainly turns up here when the sentimental musings do not turn into maudlin dirges. To the production’s credit, it moves by quickly and the cast is committed to attempting to overcome flat characterizations. But is Schooling Giacomo a work of any type of true originality? Fuggedaboutit.