Works
When Tough Guys Were King
BY JOHN DAPOLITO & DOMINIK TIEFENTHALER
The screenplay When Tough Guys Were King, written by John Dapolito and his co-author Dominik Tiefenthaler, is a father/son drama taking place over three separate timelines which combines the essence of such classic films like Stand by Me, Big Fish, and Goodfellas.
A true story depicting a life of violent crime, drug addiction and incarceration in Federal prison, is based on the extraordinary life and times of Augie Dapolito, who was suddenly and dramatically struck down by a terminal and debilitating illness at the age of 51.
The film uses video-taped recordings by his eldest and estranged son, John Dapolito, for dramatic tension throughout… The result is a deeply impacting, emotional and resonating film, with the healing/feel-good potential of a Good Will Hunting.
Baptism by Fire
BY JOHN DAPOLITO
Baptism by Fire is based on Joseph Campbell’s PBS special, the Power of Myth with Bill Moyer. The play explores a botched Rite of Passage ritual between an estranged father and his son [because that is what has happened in America for the last sixty years], shortly after the son has committed a heinous act of violence against a fellow artist. Here John Dapolito explores Mr. Campbell’s compelling PBS comment that America has lost sight of the rite of passage rituals power…today we only get a slap on the wrist. John brings us deep into the underground cave (basement apartment) of a seemingly brutal and unforgiving world…but is it? It’s here that he attempts to reveal the deep hunger for male guidance in America, as evidenced by our “lost-boys” and “man-child” culture. A truly powerful read and night of theatre.
Reviews for Baptism by Fire
Daily News Drama Critic by Howard Kissel
One of the most amazing things about New York today is the proliferation of new theaters—even though most of them adhere to the bare-walls esthetic, as if lack of ornament is a sign of seriousness.
A delightful exception is the elegant new theater Micheal Imperioli (of “The Sopranos”) has built at 257 West 29th Street.
It’s current offering is John Dapolito’s “Baptism by Fire,” a surprisingly gripping play about a tough, quirky father and his emotionally overwrought son. Directed by Imperioli, the play boasts an understated but powerful performance by Vincent Curatola as the domineering father. Nick Sandow is convincing as the confused son, and Sharon Angela is extremely funny as the father’s girlfriend.The play its self is very solid, especially the startling speech Curatola gives just before the end.
– Review by Howard Kissel
Killer Midgets
BY JOHN DAPOLITO
In recent years, John has worked on a newly revised edition of Killer Midgets and co-produced and directed Brian Gianci’s new play Lets Kill Grandma This Christmas. John is also set to launch a new web-series on manhood titled Men Without Myth – look for it soon.
Reviews for Killer Midgets
NYTheatre.com Review by Martin Denton
Now, having said all that, it’s going to be tough to tell you too much more, because a good deal of the impact of Killer Midgets depends on the various surprises that Dapolito springs on the audience at key points throughout the piece. The play takes place in a filthy, tiny apartment in New York City in the early 1990s, “eight years after the Cabbage Patch craze” an anoouncer informs us. That piece of information turns out to be important, because Rich, one of the two men who lives in this squalid room, used to work in a toy store. But on the day that a flock of crazed grandmothers attacked him to get the last Cabbage Patch doll in the shop, Rich resigned not just from his job but from society. For the past eight years, he has not ventured outside his apartment, which he shares with his friend, Mike.
Our first look at the apartment, spectacularly rendered by set designer Michelle Malavet, is shockingly revelatory: it’s a claustrophobic, square chamber, meagerly furnished with a table, a couple of chairs, and a dcaying refrigerator, awash–there’s no other way to describe it–in newspaper. Seated in one chair, dressed only in his underwear and sporting castaway-style unkempt beard and mane, is mike; somewhere, buried under some of yesterday’s news, is a simialrly decked out Rich.
Dapolito’s neat trick is that we quickly grasp the internal logic of Mike and Rich’s world as the two chat during the play’s remarkable first act; it even starts to make a kind of sense. Killer Midgets does exactly what the best absurdist writing should: through the prism of Mike and Rich’s warped and highly original approach to life, we gain significant insight into our own. Mike’s the philosopher of the pair, and his strange comic musings on a variety of subjects are astoundingly incisive.
Eventually, a missive from the outside world causes Rich and Mike to take unprecedented action. I won’t give too much away here, but it involves stolen newspapers, a mysterious neighbor, and an enigmatic note written with mold retrieved from the long-dysfunctional refrigerator, It leads to a visit from the midgets of the play’s title, which itself precipitates a more pointed–and poignant–philosophical discussion that you absolutely don’t see coming. The ending is a knockout.
Killer Midgets is a rich, engaging script, and it’s been smartly directed by the author. Joseph Kamal (Mike and George Deihl, Jr. (Rich), onstage throughout, give exceptional performances, at once deeply nuanced and–especially in Deihl’s case–brazenly and fearlessly physical. Ethan Crough, David Steinberg, and Mark Trombino ar effective as Frankie, Tommy, and Joey, three men who turn out to be much more than the killer midgets of the play’s title.
Dapolito’s bio in the program says he’s giving up playwriting after the show closes. I hope he’ll reconsider.
– NYTheatre.com Review by Martin Denton, April 8, 2001
Augie's Ring
BY JOHN DAPOLITO
Augie’s Ring is a gritty urban play about two white trash addicts who ruthlessly brutalize each other in an effort to ward off the bitter pain of existence. He, a grief stricken neighborhood legend with a towering reputation for physical violence and she, a conniving snot noised Dalila who’ll do nearly anything to get her drink. The collision all to true, heartbreaking, and often down right hilarious.
Reviews for Augie’s Ring
NYTheatre.com Review by Martin Denton
– nytheatre.com review, Martin Denton
Backstage West Review by Madeleine Shaner
Although we, the prescient audience, can figure out the outcome of their fearsome encounter, the getting there is an exciting and ultimately satisfying experience. This little girl, for whom game-playing is an art she’s practiced since she was in diapers, reaches for some point of moral stamina that breaks down the defenses of a man who’s lost what he loves, along with a part of himself he may never be able to recover. DiPierro is amazing — a bitch and a baby at the same time, a slutty woman and a teacher’s pet, a sad child and a ditsy dodo-head. You want to smack her and hold her at the same time, wash her face, put her in a ruffled cotton granny nightgown, and give her a mug of hot cocoa to drink while you tell her bedtime stories. Colella, a seemingly tough hombre with all the street smarts he needs to impress and inspire fear in the local lower-depth establishment, inspires much the same feelings. There’s no way these two shouldn’t be together. Great chemistry. Interesting inspiration.
An Act of Kindness gives us another facet of Colella’s ability to entrust us with his angst. As an artist who’s just burned all his paintings and opened his home to the homeless Ali (Stephanie Greene), who spends the major part of the play scarfing up a huge bowl of spaghetti, showered with a whole container of grated Parmesan — a divinely funny sequence that mystifies, then explains all — Steve (Colella) finds his way back to living through the example of a homeless pregnant woman who’s found her way, despite society and its pretensions. Again, Colella is perfect — an artist who has lost his emotional voice — and Greene is nothing less than superb. What more can I say?
Minimal production values — a black-box theatre that was redolent of chemical spray to reduce bug infestation in the ancient theatre seats, poor lighting, imperfect sightlines, inadequate publicity and press materials — all fade in light of major work crying out for significant recognition. This fledgling N.Y. transplant should grow well where it’s newly planted.
– Backstage West Review by Madeleine Shaner
Los Angeles Theater Reviews by Michael Green
Girl (a compelling Carolann DiPirro), a besotted slut, courts Augie with vicious put-downs until the integrity of his rage, turned against her, breaks down both their defenses and commands her respect and nurture. Kindness finds a haunted, guilt-racked artist (Colella) atoning for his sins by feeding a pregnant vagrant (a deeply affecting Stephanie Greene) in his apartment. Fashioning themselves after The Getaway, which is all about trust, “Ali” brilliantly spills her brutal trailer-trash past, prompting a compliment she can’t handle from “Steve,” who wants her to stay — but she won’t be that soft — so Steve tries in vain to relieve his lacerating isolation with confession. Taut writing, tough direction, and brilliant diamond-hard viscerally honest performances resonate with the primitive set to create a primordial vortex so regrettably rarely found elsewhere.
– Los Angeles Theater Reviews, Michael Green
An Act of Kindness
BY JOHN DAPOLITO
Reviews for An Act of Kindness
Backstage West Review by Madeleine Shaner
Although we, the prescient audience, can figure out the outcome of their fearsome encounter, the getting there is an exciting and ultimately satisfying experience. This little girl, for whom game-playing is an art she’s practiced since she was in diapers, reaches for some point of moral stamina that breaks down the defenses of a man who’s lost what he loves, along with a part of himself he may never be able to recover. DiPierro is amazing — a bitch and a baby at the same time, a slutty woman and a teacher’s pet, a sad child and a ditsy dodo-head. You want to smack her and hold her at the same time, wash her face, put her in a ruffled cotton granny nightgown, and give her a mug of hot cocoa to drink while you tell her bedtime stories. Colella, a seemingly tough hombre with all the street smarts he needs to impress and inspire fear in the local lower-depth establishment, inspires much the same feelings. There’s no way these two shouldn’t be together. Great chemistry. Interesting inspiration.
An Act of Kindness gives us another facet of Colella’s ability to entrust us with his angst. As an artist who’s just burned all his paintings and opened his home to the homeless Ali (Stephanie Greene), who spends the major part of the play scarfing up a huge bowl of spaghetti, showered with a whole container of grated Parmesan — a divinely funny sequence that mystifies, then explains all — Steve (Colella) finds his way back to living through the example of a homeless pregnant woman who’s found her way, despite society and its pretensions. Again, Colella is perfect — an artist who has lost his emotional voice — and Greene is nothing less than superb. What more can I say?
Minimal production values — a black-box theatre that was redolent of chemical spray to reduce bug infestation in the ancient theatre seats, poor lighting, imperfect sightlines, inadequate publicity and press materials — all fade in light of major work crying out for significant recognition. This fledgling N.Y. transplant should grow well where it’s newly planted.
– Backstage West Review by Madeleine Shaner
Los Angeles Theater Reviews by Michael Green
Girl (a compelling Carolann DiPirro), a besotted slut, courts Augie with vicious put-downs until the integrity of his rage, turned against her, breaks down both their defenses and commands her respect and nurture. Kindness finds a haunted, guilt-racked artist (Colella) atoning for his sins by feeding a pregnant vagrant (a deeply affecting Stephanie Greene) in his apartment. Fashioning themselves after The Getaway, which is all about trust, “Ali” brilliantly spills her brutal trailer-trash past, prompting a compliment she can’t handle from “Steve,” who wants her to stay — but she won’t be that soft — so Steve tries in vain to relieve his lacerating isolation with confession. Taut writing, tough direction, and brilliant diamond-hard viscerally honest performances resonate with the primitive set to create a primordial vortex so regrettably rarely found elsewhere.
– Los Angeles Theater Reviews, Michael Green