A well-told 'Bronx Tale'

In a dark suit and with an air of suppressed restlessness, actor Chazz Palminteri moves like a man possessed as he paces the stage of the State Theatre. He has the lean mien of a onetime prizefighter or street brawler, and his actions suggest that he is ready for a match.

The actor/writer shadowboxes childhood ghosts in "A Bronx Tale," his hoary autobiographical one-man show that opened Tuesday in Minneapolis. Deploying a battery of vocal and physical mannerisms, Palminteri vividly conjures the colorful, if stereotypical, characters of his youth -- mostly mob habitués of the New York neighborhood where he grew up more than 40 years ago. He scrunches up his mouth to evoke one wiseguy known as Mario. He drags a foot and limps to depict a peddler. One character sings instead of talking.

Palminteri checks his sleeves and collar, "Godfather"-like, to evoke Sonny, the Mafia capo who became his friend and patron. One day, Palminteri, then 9, saw Sonny murder someone. The boy did not rat him out. As Sonny's power grew -- he became the most powerful don on the Eastern Seaboard -- so did his regard for Palminteri, whom he treated like a son.

Directed ably by Jerry Zaks, Palminteri is totally engaging through the show's 90 minutes. He fills the stage with more than a dozen characters, including his parents, who disapprove of his growing ties to such mobsters as acne-faced Frankie Coffee Cake and Jimmy Ten-Two (he had feet that turned outward, as if telling the time), and Jane, the black girl that he, a Sicilian-American, likes.

Palminteri tells the story without judgment. He depicts the consternation of his bus-driver father with as much gusto as he plays Sonny's lines. It's just that Sonny has a lot more to say in "Bronx Tale."

Yet for all his acting skills and for all the honesty of both his up-from-the-neighborhood text, there's a sense that we've seen this story before. Perhaps it's because the culture is so steeped in portrayals of mobsters, from "The Godfather" to "The Sopranos," that the type has become something of a cartoon, with a physical vocabulary as recognizable as that of the Three Stooges.

There is also the matter of time. At 57, Palminteri is reliving events of four decades ago in "Bronx Tale" (which was made into a 1993 movie directed by Robert De Niro in which Palminteri played Sonny). In the 1960s, the nation may have been in the throes of the civil rights movement, but not in this corner of the Bronx. The closest we get to anything like an awakening in "Bronx Tale" is a recollection of a tragic encounter between black and Italian toughs in the Bronx.

"A Bronx Tale" would have been fresh and revelatory 30 years ago. It remains a compelling survival story today.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390