The formula that draws youthful audiences to the movies today -- extreme violence interspersed with raunchy wisecracks -- has been tapped by John Pollono in the writing of his new play, Razorback, now in its world premiere run at Theatre Theater. A lurid melodrama filled with killings, profanity and jokes, Razorback drew laughter and cheers from those in attendance on opening night, most of whom seemed were in their twenties.
Pollono sets his story on the coast of Maine, where Dean (Richard Fancy), the ailing patriarch of a Mafia family has come to die. A big, loud, bully of a man who continually rages against death (and just about everything else), Dean tries to inculcate DJ (Edward Tournier), his sensitive 18-year-old son, a bio major at Dartmouth, with his macho beliefs.
Acting as a buffer between them is his wife Sandy (Suzanne Ford), a sweet, naive woman who tries to find the good in life, even when Rocco (Jack Maxwell), another of Dean's sons, shows up, on the lam from some hoodlums who want to kill him.
Accompanying Rocco are his pregnant Latina girlfriend Rhianna (Melissa Paladino) and his mother, Ruth (Laura Gardner), a foul-mouthed floozy who was once married to Dean.
In a long, overwritten first act which is almost all exposition, the stage is set for the hoodlums to arrive (as Dean says in his fatalistic way, "they'll find us, and they'll try to shoot us"). Sure enough, in Act Two the bad guys (Ron Bottitta and Patrick Flaznagan) -- identifiable by their black leather jackets; shades of The Fonz!--dutifully show up and, with shotguns and pistols, make Dean's prophecy come true (after a few shocking family secrets are uncovered).
A better title for Pollono's heavyhanded, childish, preposterous play might be "There Will Be Much Too Much Blood."
