SHUT UP, SIT DOWN AND EAT

Caught this at The Players tonight on MacDougal in The Village with my good friend John Restivo, who I thought would enjoy it since he's Italian, and he did. As did the row of women behind us who were singing along to Dean Martin's That's Amore coming over the house speakers before the show and swapping stories about their Italian families.

But you don't have to be Italian to laugh the loudest, as I think this Irish-American did, at this original mashup of stand up comedy and serious play. The four stand up comics who star in it, and co-wrote the "plomedy" (along with another writer whose name I can't find on the Internet and I left the program on the counter at the pizza joint in Penn Station getting a slice while waiting for my train) as it's being called, are Tina Giorgi, Eric Tartaglione, Chris Monty and Joe Moffa. And my old friend Eve Brandstein directed it.

Hey, if you're Italian, or not, don't miss this if you can get to The Village on a night when it's playing, or if it travels to a city near you in the future. It's just what my friend John and I needed, a night of laughter with a few pulls on the old heartstrings thrown in.