Watch a couple episodes of “The Sopranos” or a few Martin Scorsese movies, and it becomes clear that rivaling mob bosses are a hallmark of the gangster genre. One thing these bosses almost always have in common is they’re male.
Vancouver writer Gary Corbin decided to present a new twist on this familiar formula by having women vie for control of the Chicago organized crime scene in his interactive murder mystery dinner show, “Mama Versus the Mob.”
Magenta Theater will present Corbin’s work Saturday and the following week at Rosemary Cafe in downtown Vancouver. Tickets to the show include a multicourse Italian dinner prepared by Rosemary Cafe owner Cheryl Cameron and her staff, as well as live music. Hadas Cassorla, who plays crooner Lola Falanova in the show, will sing Gershwin tunes accompanied by Steve Goodwin on piano.
Corbin’s show is set in Prohibition-era Chicago, and centers on dueling bosses “Smart” Alex Caponi (based on real-life gangster Al Capone) and George “Bugsy” Moroni (inspired by Bugs Moran and played here by Goodwin), as well as the women in their lives. Especially central is “Mama” Mia Mangia, Caponi’s half-sister who is secretly dating Moroni. Together she and Caponi run a restaurant and nightclub, and Mangia begins clamoring for more power.
The other women in the show, having recently achieved the right to vote and currently enjoying the freedom of the flapper era, also start to hunger for control of the mob. When a main character dies, everyone — women and men — jockeys for position.
Corbin said the show is really a comedic battle of the sexes.
Though Corbin has acted in murder mystery shows in the past, this is the first he has written. It’s also a first for Magenta. The theater group has done staged readings before at Rosemary Cafe, but never a full show with a themed dinner menu. Magenta plans to do another murder mystery dinner show at Rosemary in August 2011.
“I think it’s going to be a lot of fun,” said Cameron, who has put together a special “Mama Versus the Mob” menu featuring Parmesan bread sticks, Caesar salad, three-cheese ziti with sausage or vegetarian marinara sauce and a dessert of biscotti accompanied by limoncello- and blueberry-topped ice cream.
The show is capped at 40 guests, so it will be an intimate, participatory experience, said director Bonnie Littleton, who lives outside Camas. Patrons will mingle and dine with the characters and be part of the action. At the end, audience members will decide not only who the murderer is but also who should take control of the Chicago mob scene.
“The audience will really feel like they’re part of it,” Littleton said.
Among the characters the audience will get to know is Mangia, the show’s titular Mama, played by Vancouver resident and Magenta regular Andrea K. Adams. She is one of eight performers from the greater Vancouver-Portland area featured in the program.
The show is scripted, but parts are improvised because of the audience participation factor. Several performers have experience with improvisation through Magenta or ComedySportz Portland, but it’s new to Adams. “You just really have to know your character inside and out, you have to have a backstory, and you can’t waver,” she said.
Co-star Martin Slagle, who plays Caponi, has participated in Magenta Improv Theater for about a year, but this will be his first time doing a scripted play-improvisation hybrid. “It’s something new and different, which I’m always excited about,” said Slagle, a Vancouver resident.
Slagle is most looking forward to seeing how the audience interacts with Caponi, the boss of Chicago’s South Side. “The audience interaction is going to be fantastic,” he said.
Thanks to Mary Ann Albright
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Monday, November 01, 2010
Salvatore Vitale Murders 11, Serves Only 7 Years in Prison
A Mafia boss who turned informant on one of New York's notorious five families - and pleaded guilty to 11 murders - has been sensationally sentenced to 'time served' today.
Salvatore Vitale, 63, immediately cooperated with the FBI and prosecutors after his arrest and imprisonment in January 2003.
He identified more than 500 gangsters and helped convict more than 50 - including his brother-in-law and former Bonanno chief Joseph Massino.
Today's sentence will mean that Vitale will have served around 18 months for each of his 11 murders.
It is expected that he will immediately enter the witness protection programme
.
'Quite simply, Vitale has likely been the most important cooperator in the history of law enforcement efforts to prosecute the Mafia,' said Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis, of United States District Court in Brooklyn, when he meted out the sentence today.
Judge Garaufis noted that the criminal justice system was 'dependent on the cooperation of criminals in the prosecution of other criminals'. He added: 'This cooperation does not come without a cost.' The judge noted that he was under no illusion that Vitale had become a government witness for any reason other than self-preservation, noting that he did so only when he realised that the crime family had come to see him as a liability.
The judge said: 'It is unfortunate that law enforcement must, of necessity, obtain the cooperation of felons to address the pernicious crimes committed by organised crime,' the judge said. 'But without the benefit of cooperating witnesses like the defendant, the government’s ability to prosecute the secretive and rule-bound world of organised crime would be greatly impaired.'
In October 2004, information he gave to federal officers led to the discovery of three bodies in Ozone Park, Queens.
Vitale’s lawyers, Kenneth Murphy and Brian Waller, had pushed for the sentence to be 'time served'.
Vitale had been facing life in prison.
In a bid to put Vitale away for good, prosecutor Greg Andres read aloud letters sent to the judge from the wife and daughter of one of the victims. Robert Perrino was a Bonanno associate who was the superintendent of deliveries at The New York Post and who was slain in 1992. Vitale ordered the killing based on the fear that Perrino might cooperate with the authorities. Perrino’s body was not found until Vitale himself began cooperating with police. Perrino'd widow Rosalie wrote: 'As a result of Salvatore Vitale’s criminal inhuman behaviour, my grandson never knew his grandfather, and he and our granddaughter have grown up without this special man. 'Salvatore Vitale caused my own life to unravel and the colour in my life to drain away.'
Vitale alternately stared at the table before him and watched the judge as Mr Andres read the letter.
At the end of the hearing, the judge asked the people in the gallery to remain seated so deputy United States marshals could escort Vitale out of the courtroom. He left through the courtroom’s rear door, beside the judge’s bench, and did not look back.
It is not the first time Mafia informants have been given lesser sentences for information that leads to the arrest and prosecution of their bosses. Salvatore Gravano, an underboss for the Gambino family known as 'Sammy the Bull', admitted to 19 murders in 1991 in exchange for a lesser sentence and served just five years.
As part of his testimony, notorious gangster John Gotti was jailed for life.
Vitale, wearing a blue suit and silver pattered tie, twice dabbed tears from his eyes during the court proceeding - and exhaled sharply just before the judge read out the sentence.
The former paratrooper - known as Good Looking Sal' during his three decades committing countless crimes on behalf of the Bonanno family - read from a statement where he apologised to the families of his victims.
He said: 'I would say to them that I pray daily for my victims’ souls and I’m truly sorry. I stand in front of you, your honour, ashamed of the life I used to live. 'I disgraced my father’s name, my name, my sons’ name.'
Vitale operated at the highest levels of organised crime while a member of La Cosa Nostra, and knew many of the Bonanno secrets - including quite literally where bodies were buried.
Salvatore Vitale, 63, immediately cooperated with the FBI and prosecutors after his arrest and imprisonment in January 2003.
He identified more than 500 gangsters and helped convict more than 50 - including his brother-in-law and former Bonanno chief Joseph Massino.
Today's sentence will mean that Vitale will have served around 18 months for each of his 11 murders.
It is expected that he will immediately enter the witness protection programme
.
'Quite simply, Vitale has likely been the most important cooperator in the history of law enforcement efforts to prosecute the Mafia,' said Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis, of United States District Court in Brooklyn, when he meted out the sentence today.
Judge Garaufis noted that the criminal justice system was 'dependent on the cooperation of criminals in the prosecution of other criminals'. He added: 'This cooperation does not come without a cost.' The judge noted that he was under no illusion that Vitale had become a government witness for any reason other than self-preservation, noting that he did so only when he realised that the crime family had come to see him as a liability.
The judge said: 'It is unfortunate that law enforcement must, of necessity, obtain the cooperation of felons to address the pernicious crimes committed by organised crime,' the judge said. 'But without the benefit of cooperating witnesses like the defendant, the government’s ability to prosecute the secretive and rule-bound world of organised crime would be greatly impaired.'
In October 2004, information he gave to federal officers led to the discovery of three bodies in Ozone Park, Queens.
Vitale’s lawyers, Kenneth Murphy and Brian Waller, had pushed for the sentence to be 'time served'.
Vitale had been facing life in prison.
In a bid to put Vitale away for good, prosecutor Greg Andres read aloud letters sent to the judge from the wife and daughter of one of the victims. Robert Perrino was a Bonanno associate who was the superintendent of deliveries at The New York Post and who was slain in 1992. Vitale ordered the killing based on the fear that Perrino might cooperate with the authorities. Perrino’s body was not found until Vitale himself began cooperating with police. Perrino'd widow Rosalie wrote: 'As a result of Salvatore Vitale’s criminal inhuman behaviour, my grandson never knew his grandfather, and he and our granddaughter have grown up without this special man. 'Salvatore Vitale caused my own life to unravel and the colour in my life to drain away.'
Vitale alternately stared at the table before him and watched the judge as Mr Andres read the letter.
At the end of the hearing, the judge asked the people in the gallery to remain seated so deputy United States marshals could escort Vitale out of the courtroom. He left through the courtroom’s rear door, beside the judge’s bench, and did not look back.
It is not the first time Mafia informants have been given lesser sentences for information that leads to the arrest and prosecution of their bosses. Salvatore Gravano, an underboss for the Gambino family known as 'Sammy the Bull', admitted to 19 murders in 1991 in exchange for a lesser sentence and served just five years.
As part of his testimony, notorious gangster John Gotti was jailed for life.
Vitale, wearing a blue suit and silver pattered tie, twice dabbed tears from his eyes during the court proceeding - and exhaled sharply just before the judge read out the sentence.
The former paratrooper - known as Good Looking Sal' during his three decades committing countless crimes on behalf of the Bonanno family - read from a statement where he apologised to the families of his victims.
He said: 'I would say to them that I pray daily for my victims’ souls and I’m truly sorry. I stand in front of you, your honour, ashamed of the life I used to live. 'I disgraced my father’s name, my name, my sons’ name.'
Vitale operated at the highest levels of organised crime while a member of La Cosa Nostra, and knew many of the Bonanno secrets - including quite literally where bodies were buried.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
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