AN AUDIENCE WITH THE MAFIA. To 16 February.
London.
AN AUDIENCE WITH THE MAFIA.
Apollo Theatre To 16 February 2008.
Sat-Thu 8pm Mat Sun & Wed 3pm.
Runs 1hr 55min One interval.
TICKETS: 0870 040 0080.
www.anaudiencewiththemafia.com (booking fee by ‘phone & online).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 January.
A barrage of facts.
The pseudonymous Mercy Man, who performs 95% of this show solo, knows his stuff. Loves it too. Especially Meyer Lansky, mob-banker, who the performer met a couple of times late in life. Lansky’s life, that is. And he seems quite unusual in mob-head terms inasmuch as he had a later life. Many died violently, young. Al Capone died quietly, but never made it to 50, including his years in prison and subsequent retirement.
Dutch Schultz, neither from Holland nor called Schultz, was godfather of the sound-bite, realising his own name was too long for the headlines. He had a taste for plopping opponents’ feet in cement before tipping then into the Hudson River. Reviewing a show like this, it’s comforting he’s not around any more.
And it was Benny Siegel (no-one called him Bugsy in his hearing) whose disastrous attempt to makeover Las Vegas led to a bounced check - don’t worry he told the nervous builder, “we only shoot each other”. Six bullets in his own body went on to prove the point.
Mercy Man is stronger on history than analysis. How much was the Mafia a tight omerta organisation, how much a collection of wild hoodlums uncertainly restrained by the certainty of reprisals if found cheating on the mob? How did the godfathers see themselves and their operations? We have assertions the Mafia is democratic. Did they believe that of themselves? Really?
If Mercy Man doesn’t engage with that, he often seems not to be over-bothered engaging with us. Marching across the stage with a stiff gait he spends a lot of time apparently addressing stage-hands in the wings. And when he does go frontal, the eyes seem half-closed, or looking for the gap between stalls and circle, while sentences are awkwardly shaped. Nicole Faraday’s interpolations point up the contrast with professional skills.
Production values, with archive photos and headlines, plus Mercy Man himself emerging from and returning to a shadowy onscreen hit-squad, seek to compensate. But, with the emphasis on how Prohibition opened America to organised crime, it’s a shame The Mercy Man doesn’t speak easy himself.
Cast:
The Mercy Man, Nicole Faraday.
Director: Keith Strachan.
Designer: Will Bowen.
Lighting: Ben Cracknell.
Soyund: Gareth Owen.
Projections: Paul Blake.
2008-01-28 13:03:29