It was a no-brainer that Trinity Repertory Company should bring forth The Prince of Providence, the splashy, expansive (2 hours, 45 min.) saga of legendary mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci, Jr., whose over two decades in office—interrupted by a no-contest assault plea, a RICO conviction, and an enforced hiatus in the wilderness of talk radio—saw the renaissance of the metropolis from “the armpit of New England,” one of the politer nicknames, to its current status as a business and cultural leader. The Rep itself, as George Brant’s text freely acknowledges, was a linchpin recipient of Cianci’s largesse in developing downtown, and sellout audiences have reportedly been paying Hamilton-scaled prices to share memories and in-jokes about the bantam Italian-American rooster who took on the entrenched Irish-American establishment and triumphed, for a time anyway. Whether the appeal will spread beyond the I-95 corridor, however, is an open question.
From Mike Stanton’s biography, Brant (Grounded) efficiently carves out a lucid narrative, no mean feat considering the scope of the career in question. Starting from Cianci’s unexpected squeaker victory over the Democratic machine in the mid-70s, he battles a recalcitrant City Council and unreliable allies, prevails in multiple reelection bids, and wrestles with personal foibles. (An attack on the supposed lover of his estranged wife led to the 1984 removal from office that closes act one.) A cavalcade of pols, Mob types, mouthpieces, and ordinary citizens passes through Hizzoner’s office, impressively recreated by designer Sara Brown, and despite gaps—at least two cronies seem to turn on Buddy on a dime, inexplicably—it’s all lively and relatively easy to follow.
But authenticity is not a hallmark of director Taibi Magar’s production, in which 14 actors—all of whom play multiple roles except for Scott Aiello in the lead—are evidently competing as to who can incorporate the most funny voices and odd walks and weird makeup touches across three hours. Scenes among goodfellas come across as Sopranos parodies, and clichéd toothy-newscaster, blue-collar roughneck, and mincing gay stereotypes abound. Much dialogue is spoken face-front and aimed at the back wall, a technique more often associated with broad musicals than straight plays of deep feeling. What’s most regrettable is that pegging everyone as a larger-than-life cartoon diminishes a larger-than-life protagonist. The late Mayor Cianci becomes one more loud voice in the room, rather than the singular presence against which others are measured.
And he’s loud, all right. Aiello, whose intelligence and stamina are prodigious, is directed to bellow from the jump with nowhere to go until, addled with booze and blow, he looks primed to ask us to say hello to his little friend in a Carol Burnett Show spoof of Scarface. Audience members I chatted up during intermission spoke of the mayor’s Jekyll and Hyde quality (evoked frequently by the D.A., well played by Joe Wilson, Jr., during the corruption trial in act two). “He had a darker side for sure,” said one gent, “but he knew how to charm the big boys. He was great with the elite.” Easy suavity, the Jekyll aspect, is almost absent from Aiello’s portrayal, which would also benefit from more moments in which malevolence comes out of nowhere to overwhelm. An explosive temper isn’t as interesting when the finger is never removed from the hairtrigger. “Ego and power!” wallows Buddy in a fetal position as his world crumbles, a moment which superfluously spells out what we have understood to be his hubris all along, without offering much in terms of meaning.
Is interpretation so important? I’d say so. At a time when America is dealing with one particular political rogue of arguable lovability, one expects The Prince of Providence to help us make sense of the breed, or at least have a distinctive point of view. But I left Trinity Rep unenlightened. Does Hizzoner deserve all the credit for the city’s undeniable revitalization—did no one else contribute? Assuming he was The Man, how exactly did he get it done, and was it worth the cost? What’s the right balance for our troubled cities, between can-do politics and politicians who can’t do without getting their hands filthy? To what extent does progress require a deal with the devil? An intriguing “meta” epilogue, directly challenging the provenance of the Cianci legacy, can’t in and of itself lead us to explore the story’s moral questions when they haven’t been pointedly posed all along.
The Prince of Providence opened September 16, 2019, at Trinity Repertory Company (Providence, RI) and runs through October 27. Tickets and information: trinityrep.com
