Vinnie Vidivici

Theater doesn't get more basic than "Vinnie Vidivici": It's just one writer-director-performer sitting at a drum set and storytelling. Vince Santoro, an Italian-American from Tennessee, from all evidence had an unremarkable adolescence: strict parents, average sibs, and a desire to impress everyone. He wanted to play varsity football despite his modest size, to get girls to notice him and to endure the awfulness of Catholic school. I'd love to report that his relating of this familiar material is poetic and penetrating, but despite some modest rhyming to drum rhythm, Beat style—"My big brother/Was a real mother"—the language is prosaic, and the emotions don't run deep.

He saves his most touching vignette, involving his brother's return from Vietnam, for last. But even here, the reportage feels off-point, and the hoped-for catharsis never arrives. Santoro seems like a nice guy. But "Vinnie Vidivici" plays like one of those one-man shows whose raison d'être is that the author had a lot to get off his chest, and this was cheaper than therapy.



Presented by Panther Canyon Productions as part of the New York International Fringe Festival at La MaMa ETC, 74A E. Fourth St., NYC. Aug. 22–28. Remaining performances: Thu., Aug. 26, 5 p.m.; Fri., Aug. 27, 7 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 28, 8:45 p.m. (866) 468-7619 or www.fringenyc.org.