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Ongoing	Fri-Sat, 7pm

Profile

When Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding opened on Valentine’s Day 1988, this kooky, corny, pseudo-ceremony was a groundbreaker for interactive theater. Nancy Cassaro’s conceptual script is simple and straightforward: tacky Italians from Queens get married in a shabby catering hall with the audience cast as their guests. To that end, the show doesn’t tell a story so much as send a dozen or so stereotypes—the low-class bride, the doltish groom, a drug-addled ex— into the crowd then lets it rip (or flop). Whether an actual narrative emerges depends on the night; most evenings, your level of enjoyment will depend on how you feel about group dancing to “YMCA,” lining up for a pasta buffet, or chatting with a method actor or a sly improvisor. (The cast represents both schools.) If getting in on the action isn’t your style, you’re going to feel as if you’ve crashed a stranger’s party. But whose? That of the performers? The bachelorette’s at table 12? The birthday revelers' near the bar? Over the years, spin-offs (Finnegan’s Funeral), rip-offs (Joey & Maria’s Comedy Italian Wedding), and even a couple of inspired variations (The Donkey Show) have come and gone but Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding remains the standard. At its peak, the show ran in 12 cities; nowadays, for now and maybe forever, for better or worse, this is Gotham’s long-winded answer to dinner theater. — Drew Pisarra

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• Still Playing at a Theater Near You (10/10/06)
• Gimmick Theater Through The Ages (11/15/04)