278. NO PAROLE
Carlo D'Amore.
Carlo D'Amore.
NO
PAROLE is a solo performance written by and starring Carlo D’Amore, a
Peruvian-born actor, director, and writer who is billed as the "creative director and owner of Live IN Theater Productions." It’s being given in a gymnasium on
the fourth floor of Hartley House, on W. 46th Street, which provides social,
cultural, and recreational services to the Hell’s Kitchen community. Part of
the gym has been partitioned for the intimate performance, in which Mr. D’Amore
stands on a simple black platform (there are no design credits) to recount his
experiences with his eccentric mother, whom he describes as a con artist; he
plays her both as a young mother and when older, after she’d suffered a stroke
and come to live with him. To tell his tale of coming to terms with her
behavior, which covers three continents over a period of 40 years, he plays
multiple other roles as well, using no actual hand props (he holds his fingers
together to suggest a joint) and switching rapidly from character to character. One of his best characterizations is that of a flirtatious worker in a gay health clinic.
Mr.
D’Amore, who wears a colorful, short-sleeved Ed Hardy t-shirt over a long-sleeved one throughout, is a gifted mimic
but his performance jumps so rapidly from persona to persona, and with so many leaps
in the time frame, that the narrative grows muddled; I found myself spending as
much time observing and contemplating his technique as attending to what he was
saying.
In the piece, which has been performed elsewhere since at least 2008, Mr. D'Amore reveals
his mother as a hell of a character, showing her as a fake immigration lawyer,
a bad check passer, an avid shoplifter, and, of course, a convict when she went
to prison. Frustrated as she could often make him, he demonstrates the depth of
his love for her, liar, thief, and fraud though she may have been. The material will be of interest only to dyed-in-the-wool fans of the solo performance genre.