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Playing a political murder case for laughsBy JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic© St. Petersburg Times published January 24, 2002 TAMPA -- It was Marx who said history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce, and that seems to be the guiding principal behind Sacco and Vanzetti: A Vaudeville. There's no doubt about playwright Louis Lippa's position on the Sacco and Vanzetti case. In what became an international cause celebre, the Italian anarchists were tried for the murder of a Boston shoe factory paymaster and a guard, convicted and, after six years of appeals and protests, electrocuted in 1927. It was a turning point in American politics, part of a crackdown on radicals that centered on foreigners. The left never really recovered. Lippa thinks the whole affair was a joke, and he has turned the final hours of the martyred Italians into a vaudeville act, complete with hat-and-cane numbers and a "Who's on First?" routine. Though his play is more propaganda than drama, it gets a bravura performance by a pair of gifted clowns, Billy Martinez as Nicola Sacco and Sean Sanczel as Bartolomeo Vanzetti, at Gorilla Theatre. Director David McElroy keeps things simple on a set that consists mainly of two chairs and a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. When Martinez and Sanczel riff on the stereotype of bomb-throwing anarchists by dribbling a basketball bomb, it's hilarious. Ditto for piano player Andrei Cheine dashing off a bar or two of Finiculi, Finicula as a trial witness struggles to identify the bandit as . . ."Ahh! Italian!" The idea of Sacco and Vanzetti breaking into Side by Side is charming. About the only effort at characterization is to show Vanzetti never lost hope and Sacco was on the verge of madness in prison. Treating the political trial of the 20th century as an absurdity is clever, but after the point has been made a few times, there's no place for the play to go. It's like one long punch line. THEATER REVIEWSacco and Vanzetti: A Vaudeville, by Louis Lippa, continues Thursday through Sunday through Feb. 3 at Gorilla Theatre. Tickets: $19 and $22. (813) 879-2914.
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