STAGE REVIEW : Group Rep Offers a Zesty ‘Spaghetti’ : Sam Adamo’s comic drama about an Italian immigrant family caught between two worlds provides both personal and artistic sparks.

There’s a moment early on in Sam Adamo’s comic drama “Spaghetti and Apple Pie” when Anna (Sherry Adamo), the put-upon mother of Isabelle (Lori Janover), throws a bread roll at her daughter in exasperation. Isabelle has made the first of the Italian-American family’s many declarations of independence in the New World (she wants a new job, and more distressing, she wants out of the home), and Mama can’t take it.

Then Anna dashes over, picks up the roll, swiftly wipes it off with a cloth and drops it back on the dinner table. This too will pass, and besides, we can’t waste any food.

Craig Alpaugh’s staging at the Group Repertory Theatre is stocked with little moments like this, and it lifts what might seem to be an ordinary family play, with all the ordinary Italian stereotypes, to a more impassioned realm. You can almost taste the bonding--and the schisms--on this stage.

That hasn’t been the case at Group Rep for some time. Alpaugh himself directed the company’s rather sad farce, “Neighborhood Crime Watch,” and many of these actors are veterans of some of Group Rep’s poorer days. Suddenly, there’s some magic going on, but it’s no miracle.

The difference is the play, and the sparks--both personal and artistic--that it has set off. Personal, since the Adamo family is all over this show: father Sam, playwright and the clan’s scene-stealing old codger with his own American surprises; daughter Sherry, whose Anna is a marvelously empathetic eye of the familial hurricane; and daughter Paula, whose apartment set (with help from Van Boudreaux’s lights) oozes ‘30s Little Italy, from the decrepit icons to the brick walls outside.

Artistic, since playwright Adamo gets over his urge to pack his early scenes with expository dialogue, and zeros in on his subject, which is the immigrant’s impulse to enjoy the New World while keeping one’s head in the Old. That is especially Frank’s (a richly conflicted Robert Gallo) problem--proudly touting his “American” dealings with the union and his barber shop, then sternly rejecting daughter Isabelle’s elopement with Rylan (Mike Smith) because he’s American, and worse, a Protestant.

Alpaugh betrays a little of the farce elements of “Crime Watch,” but neither he nor Adamo lose track of “Spaghetti’s” essence, which is that the comedy and the literally bruising emotional tension stem from family members stumbling over each other to find their way in a strange place. All the way down to the littlest roles (wiseacre youngsters Michael Alpaugh and Paul Armand), the cast does its stumbling with charm, while also suggesting the fear that comes with staking your independence.

Where and When What: “Spaghetti and Apple Pie.” Location: Group Repertory Theatre, 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood. Hours: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. 7 p.m. Sundays. Indefinitely. Price: $10. Call: (818) 769-7529.