Musical Mondays: A Bronx Tale

I was able to finally see A Bronx Tale in its final week before closing, and what struck me first was a genuine curiosity on the demographic breakdown of the show—not by race or by age necessarily. Rather, I was curious what percentage of the audience came in from New Jersey or Long Island specifically to see this show. I’m thinking the show presented itself and tailored its marketing purposefully to this crowd, and to the marketing team’s credit, it worked. People throughout the audience loved the show.

This is probably my first thought because overall the show was almost aggressively fine. It wasn’t bad; it wasn’t good. It was fine. It was mostly inoffensive theater with performances that were mostly OK. The one notable, and huge, exception to the fine performances was that of Chaz Paminteri. Mr. Palminteri wrote A Bronx Tale as a 1989 one man show that opened Off-Broadway to some critical success then starred opposite Robert DeNiro in the 1993 film, which was a critical success. Mr. Palminteri even wrote the book to the musical. There is not a human being on earth who embodies A Bronx Tale more than Mr. Palminteri—there is just one major issue. Mr. Palminteri cannot sing.

I listened to the cast album after the show, and it honestly left me a little bummed. Alan Menken (Little Shop of Horrors, like 90% of the 80s and 90s Disney movies) wrote some pretty fun music for the show. A lot of the songs could’ve been fun, but Mr. Palminteri doesn’t have a strong voice at all. He is 66 years old, but his character felt much older. There was more than one occasion where he was presumably supposed to be belting and couldn’t be heard. The cast album features the man who originated the role on Broadway, Broadway veteran Nick Cordero, who shows that there were some fun songs.

It is a weird situation. I’m not sure if Mr. Palminteri went in of his own accord or if the producers decided they really needed to sell more tickets to extend the life of the show and the best way to do that was to have him in a prominent role that so many people remembered from the movie. Either way, he received massive applause upon the audience’s first sight. People loved him because he is who he is, but they couldn’t have loved him for his performance. And the sad thing is that Mr. Palminteri is clearly an incredibly talented actor. The man can act—he just cannot sing.

I might listen to the cast album sometimes—Alan Menken writes fun music. Outside of this, I think it is safe to say I will probably forget almost everything about the musical itself. I didn’t have a strong emotional reaction to most of it good or bad. Sadly, my lasting memory of the show will likely be Mr. Palminteri looking and singing older than he was. That isn’t the best memory to leave with.