Joey and Maria's Comedy Italian Wedding is an interactive dinner theater presentation and the longest-running presentation of its kind in the United States. Rights to the show are owned by Dillstar Productions of Rancho Cucamonga, California and it is presently running in Anaheim, California, San Diego, California, Palm Springs, California, Chicago, Illinois, Hartford,CT and Boston, Massachusetts.
The show was written by the husband-and-wife team of Paul and Darlyne Franklin.
Audience members are active participants in the wedding nuptials and subsequent reception, which take place in a restaurant in Boston's North End owned by the bride's cousin and the play's master of ceremonies, Carmine Cannoli. The wedding, performed by "St. Anthony's" parish priest Pastor Fazool, brings together the families of two young lovers, Joseph Anthony Gnocchi and Maria Angelina Cavatelli. The dramatis personae are all, in fact, named after Italian foodstuffs. Chaos ensues during the ceremony with the unexpected arrival of Joey's provocatively dressed ex-girlfriend, Viola Vermicelli. Viola, it seems, is still in love with Joey. Despite Joey's roving eye, he's very much in love with Maria and loudly protests Viola's arrival. After the couple is joined, the cast leaves the room and are reintroduced one at a time by Carmine. A toast is raised by Joey's scatterbrained best man, Rocco Ravioli. During the toast, dinner is being served to the guests. Upon its completion, the cast moves about the tables, chatting and flirting with the guests. After dinner, the party itself commences with traditional Italian-American flourishes such as a sing-along and a tarantella. The traditional bouquet and garter tosses place the guests who catch them in a rather bizarre and extremely funny onstage situation in which the male guest is asked to remove the garter from the leg of the female guest using only his teeth. The arrival of Maria's Mafioso godfather Don Ziti (often played by a selected good-sport audience member) also means the arrival of a large sum of money for the new couple. The "money" is handed over to Joey's cousin, bridesmaid Louisa Ravioli, for safekeeping. Naturally, the money later turns up missing and a male guest is "accused" of stealing it. He's led out the door and is met by a hail of gunfire...which misses. Joey & Maria come back dressed in snazzy traveling clothes, ready for one final dance, then off to honeymoon in Vegas and spend some of that wedding dough... "and they all lived Happily Ever After!"
Very few parts of Joey and Maria's Comedy Italian Wedding are scripted, with the momentum of the play maintained by ad-libbed slapstick humor.
Famous quotes containing the words maria, comedy, italian and/or wedding:
“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)
“The actors today really need the whip hand. They’re so lazy. They haven’t got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O’er all the Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Well, the wedding is over, the good folks are joined for better for worse—a shocking clause that!—’tis preparing one to lead a long journey, and to know the path is not altogether strewed with roses.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)