Stage Talk with Rick Koster
Where every show has something to say.
It’s an arts writer’s go-to method — using “hybrid” or “mashup” to combine two or more existing artists or films or whatever to describe something new.
“Joss Stone sounds like a mashup of Bonnie Raitt and Aretha Franklin,” for example.
Or: “‘Stranger Things’ is a mashup of H.P. Lovecraft rewriting Stephen King’s ‘It” for the producers of ‘Lost in Space.’”
In that spirit, how about a play described as “Neil Simon meets Federico Fellini”?
Wild!
As in: what the hell is that?!
It’s “An Italian Christmas Eve Feast,” a delightful two-act family comedy coming to the Garde’s Oasis Room for presentations Dec. 4-7.
Even better? This is a “hometown” concept set right here in New London and featuring an actual dinner theater experience.
Written, produced and directed by Connecticut’s own Anna Maria Trusky, the play focuses on the Christmas Eve when everyone in the far-flung Pescatore family finally makes it home for the traditional Feast of Seven Fishes. The reunion promises warmth and hilarity — if they can all reconcile a variety of dreams and hopes and differences across time.
But the Pescatores won’t be the only ones feasting.
Ticketholders will partake in salad, pizza and cannoli prepared by Old Saybrook’s most excellent Luigi’s Wood Fired Pizza Risto. To complete the spirit of the event and the season, audience members are invited to bring non-perishable food items (hey, why not dried pasta, jarred sauce, and non-refrigerated grated cheese?), which will be donated to the United Way’s Gemma Moran Food Bank.