Mangia Italiano! is a play about the Calamari Sisters and their public access television cooking show. The final staging in Orange County took place at Sugar Loaf’s Lycian Theatre wharf side stage. For nearly three hours, this flamboyant and bawdy story kept a packed audience in stitches.
The plot line centers on Delphine and Carmela Calamari, who hail from a large Italian family, and demonstrate how to cook everything from antipasto to soufflés to chicken penne. Carmela is preparing to leave the cooking show for a highly anticipated solo career launch in Boca Raton. The underlying tension and rivalry between the two comes out in hilarious ways throughout the play. The two actors playing the roles are extraordinarily versatile and amazed with their comedic timing, singing finesse, cabaret acrobatics, and humorous improvisation. Pity the late comers who arrived a few minutes past the opening and were good naturedly ribbed by Delphine, who asked, “Goodness didn’t your tickets say the play started at 3:00?” This was met with a resounding cheer from the audience.
This show involves audience participation and heaven forbid if the people pulled from the crowd aren’t Catholics! Watching the performers wearing fat suits in the August heat with such enthusiasm was commendable in and of itself. The doling out of food during and after the performance added to the delight.
Thank goodness we haven’t heard the last of the Calamari Sisters because Delphine announced at the end of the production that there would be a Christmas play coming up soon. December can’t get here soon enough! Check out the link to their website here: http://www.thecalamarisisters.com/press.html.
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