A Bronx Tale: The Musical on Tour
Originating in Los Angeles as a one-man play written and performed by Chazz Palminteri, A Bronx Tale became a 1993 movie produced and directed by Robert De Niro before opening as a Broadway musical in 2016. Palminteri's coming-of-age story about Calogero, a young New Yorker struggling to reconcile his father's values with the alluring world of organized crime, is now a powerful touring show retaining the high standards set by codirectors De Niro and Jerry Zaks. Alan Menken, known for the Disney screen and stage classics Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, composed the doo-wop flavored score. The touring cast features 2015 American Idol winner Nick Fradiani as Calogero's father, with Jeff Brooks as the charismatic mob boss, Sonny. Fans of Jersey Boys and West Side Story will find much to enjoy and admire in a musical that captures New York's multicultural milieu in all its colorful intensity.
A Bronx Tale: The Musical Background
Chazz Palminteri's stirring one-man play � about a young New Yorker torn between his father's old-school ethics and a life of crime � is based on the writer-actor's traumatic childhood encounter with murder. After portraying 18 characters onstage, Palminteri found a sympathetic patron and partner in Robert De Niro, with whom Palminteri would act in the acclaimed 1993 film adaptation of A Bronx Tale, which De Niro produced and directed. After performing his one-man show on Broadway in 2007, Palminteri expanded it into a full-fledged musical, codirected by De Niro, that fleshed out his story with the evocative sounds of doo-wop, R&B and 1960s girl groups as reimagined by composer Alan Menken with lyricist Glenn Slater. Palminteri's story also includes an interracial romance whose challenges echo those explored in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. Over the decades, A Bronx Tale has evolved into a multimedia morality saga whose universal lessons are delivered in high-spirited, emotionally riveting Broadway style.