Sharkskin and song: ‘A Bronx Tale’

He-e-y! Da Bronx got some flashy Main Stem reppin’ last week, thanks to a new musical at the Longacre Theatre.

“A Bronx Tale” is an ambitious show about coming of age in a bygone day – the ripe early 60s. A young man is torn between love, family, and the wrong side of the law. What’s a smart kid to do?

This time, it all comes down nearby, right over on Belmont Avenue, complete with fire escapes, pushcarts, Doo-Wop, and hot chicks snappin’ gum.

Youse can picture da block, know what I’m sayin? Wiseguys? We got ‘em.

In Belmont, the passage to manhood begins early, as our boy hero undergoes a baptism by fire at the hands of the neighborhood capo.

Traditions rumble like thunder across a summer horizon here, as the big arcs of story must share the stage with the gaudy clockwork of the Traditional Broadway Musical. The scales tip to Broadway. There are rousing, upbeat show-stopping numbers, and a brace of soulful ballads to fortify the duets, where heartstrings clash with fate.

Plus, you get street scenes erupting into dance, fisticuffs, moolah, and those mugs with nicknames. Yes, it’s a journey, although we only venture from Belmont to Webster Avenue, with a short detour to City Island.

The performances are top-notch. Hudson Loverro and Bobby Conte Thornton make spectacular Broadway debuts as the hero, Calogero, as boy and young man. Along the way, Calogero tussles with his dad (Richard H. Blake), with a charismatic gunsel (Nick Cordero), and with Jane (Ariana Debose), his girl from Webster Avenue. Each actor, just like each musical number in this bouncy diversion, nails the moment consistently.

But no dramaturgic shoehorn can resolve the dilemmas of scale that force so much nuance out of the storytelling. Calogero lives with the baffling conflicts of interracial romance, opposition from home, and the mixed, deadly wages of a gang mentality. The interludes between the songs, which might give heft and contour to the story, are thin at best, and in a key moment for Calogero, rushed and contradictory. Similarly, the potential showdown of Doo-Wop vs. Soul is left untouched, except for a tantalizing peek at the LP sleeves on the wall of a record store.

But it’s tough to gripe. This is a Cadillac, folks, not a Checker cab driven by one of them smarty-pants Fordham guys. A plucky show-biz heart keeps thumping along to blot out any discordant threads of what-might-have-been. This is a crowd-pleaser all the way. 

Co-Directors Robert De Niro and Jerry Zaks ensure that the action is crisp and straightforward. The acting solid and confident, a big-shouldered base to anchor Sergio Trujillo’s choreography, which grooves nicely to Alan Menkin’s music. William Ivey Long’s costumes fit the streetwise panache of author Chazz Palminteri’s cavalcade, and the old-school vibe persists down to the hard-working set designs of Beowulf Boritt, a rambling sequence of tenement facades, storefronts, stoops, and taverns.

In “A Bronx Tale,” the homegrown yearnings of a kid with dreams have catapulted all the way to Broadway, and forever attached the name of our borough to a tale of fleeting, streetwise romance.

“A Bronx Tale” is in an open-ended run at the Longacre Theatre, 220 W. 48th St. For tickets, call 212-639-2200.