Beginning its 2022-23 season, the Hampton Theatre Company in Quogue turns to "Over the River and Through the Woods," a 1998 comedy-drama by Joe DiPietro. It is a deeply satisfying production, by turns unremittingly funny and genuinely moving. Local theatergoers are unlikely to find as successful an experience this year.
Set in Hoboken, N.J., "Over the River" concerns Nick, an ambitious young Italian-American enjoying success at an unnamed corporation in Manhattan. He also has a strong sense of family, spending Sundays at his grandparents' house, the four of whom -- Emma, Nunzio, Aida, and Frank -- gather for a traditional weekend dinner. They dote over their bachelor grandson, playing board games and plying him with a mother lode of home cooking (as with many Italian-American families, food here is a symbol of comfort and love).
One day Nick comes over with an announcement. He has gotten an offer of promotion. At first the four grandparents are thrilled -- until Nick tells them that he will have to move to Seattle. The charmingly provincial grandparents at first struggle with the name of the city. Seattle? Where is that? "In Washington," Nunzio reminds them, "and not the close one."
The four are bereft at the thought of losing Nick. They make appeals to him, mostly concerning the pre-eminence of family. But Nick is resolute. The offer is too good. He needs to take this next step in his life and career. The grandparents are in a state of despair.
But Emma has a plan.
The grandparents could not be more perfectly cast. George A. Loizides (who co-directed the play with Roger Moley) as Nunzio, Catherine Maloney as Emma, Carl DiModugno as Frank, and Amelia Chiaramonte as Aida seem like a real lived-in family, playing off one another effortlessly. Ms. Maloney especially, with a sassy silver wig, gets the lion's share of the snappy lines and delivers them with a dead-on Italian-American accent and expert timing.
And Patrick C. Osborne is very good as Nick, nicely straddling the line between deep love for his grandparents and exasperation -- especially when Aida invites a young woman named Caitlin to come over to one of the Sunday dinners. The ploy is obvious -- have their grandson fall in love with an attractive young woman, thus keeping him in Hoboken.
Mr. DiPietro keeps the dialogue crackling and almost ceaselessly funny; barely a minute goes by without a new zinger. "People?" Frank says in response to Nick during a disagreement. "We're not people. We're a family."
At a certain point Nick will suffer a panic attack from the weight of his decision, and hearing that the doctor recommends staying away from anything stressful, Frank says that, naturally, "We decided he should come stay with us." It's during this convalescence that they try to amuse Nick with a round of Trivial Pursuit, and it's during this game that the play hits its comic apex in a hilarious 15-minute burst.
After this, however, a pathos takes over the second half, and it is genuinely moving. Nunzio is withholding a secret that would most certainly keep Nick from taking his promotion, and Emma urges him to tell Nick, setting up a lovely scene between him and his grandson. It's here we begin to see a kind of wisdom in Mr. DiPietro's play, concerning letting go and the need for independence -- and it's this that keeps the play, funny as it is, from slinking into sitcom territory. By the end, only the most stony-hearted viewer won't be thoroughly moved.
In a production in which everything works, so too with Mr. Lozides's set design (apparently he did triple duty), perfectly capturing the warm, slightly tacky Italian-American living room of a certain generation.
Exiting the theater, one audience member cornered one of the directors to heap praise on the production -- but she had, she said, just one issue. The actors should speak louder. It was, I think, a fair criticism. At times, the actors' projection was a touch low, and for an audience that skews above middle age, it could be potentially problematic.
Everything else in "Over the River and Through the Woods," however, is just about perfect, and for those on the East End who love good theater, it qualifies as a must-see.
The play runs through Nov. 13. More information is on the Hampton Theatre Company website.
This article has been amended from the original and the print version to correct the names of two characters.
