Stage Light

Sometimes the best moments in the theater are when no words are spoken, and the actors can just silently be.

The pat on a back, the sideways glance of the eyes or the raising of clenched fists can say more than the playwright tries to say.

These are the best moments in director T.J. Castronovo’s revival of Anne Pie’s “Front Street,” at the American Renegade Theatre, and they get us in touch with Pie ‘s Italian American family even when her kitchen-sink naturalism as a writer keeps us away.

Pie tends to construct solid dramatic work that won’t collapse on a first try, but her ways with drama are almost absurdly retro, as if Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge” were the hottest thing going. Mix Miller’s ethnic conflicts with the alternately bubbly and crusty humor of the California Italians in “They Knew What They Wanted,” and you have a good sense of where “Front Street,” set in 1944 Hartford, Conn., is going.

The message is simple--”family comes first”--as motherly Tonia DeLuna (Jade Hykush) tells her favorite son, Nicky (Travis Mitchell)--and the conflicts are basic and melodramatic. When Pie wants to lighten the mood, she opts for sitcom.

But the warmth, anger and tenderness displayed by most of Castronovo’s cast are the play going on inside the play, lending the work a more genuine quality than exists on the page. Tonia’s love of Nicky, for example, feels real here not so much for what she says but because of what Hykush, an especially potent actor, puts into it.

When Tonia’s 17-year-old daughter, Angie (the sweet Nicole Mansour), brightens up at the sight of her boyfriend, Victor (Luke Moyer), an enlistee about to ship off for the war, it comes through in the couple’s eyes more than in their dialogue, which would fit perfectly well in a Hallmark card.

There are the usual tensions that rise up in this kind of play, ranging from eldest son Sonny (Don Persons, sweating bullets), who owes more cash to mobster types than he can pay back and seems to sense that his luck has run out; to his grumpy, doddering papa, Dominic (John LaMotta), whose chilly marriage is about to go into the freezer and who thinks he can decide when and whom Angie should marry.

LaMotta’s performance, full of bug-eyed reactions and Old World cliches, is a busy case of playing to the audience and the cast’s only exception to the tone of real emotions.

BE THERE

“Front Street,” American Renegade Theatre, 11136 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends April 29. $12-$15. (818) 763-1834. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.