There's much to choose on Broadway's most famous stretch in mid-town New York. There's extravagant. There's run-of-the-mill. There's over-the-hill. Then there's A Bronx Tale, Chazz Palminteri's play set in the mean streets of 1960's uptown district and home to a working class throttled by organised crime. Palminteri's play is a one-show with more charm and character than most troupes can muster in a decade. Taking on the intimate relationship between his two protagonists; a mobster and a youth, would be enough for any actor but to see Palminteri splash the canvas with up to 33 peripheral characters is something else entirely. And to see them well-written, funny and wholly in contribution to the ambiance and tapestry of the main thread is more than an audience could hope for.

Fans of the 1993 Robert DeNiro film will find the same ground they tread over a decade ago but to see Palminteri's mastery over the actor's key tool of body language and his absolute engagement with his breathrough material - a script now over twenty years old - is a different experience entirely, and one that will live on in memory for some time.

In an age in which viewers/voyeurs are constantly moving further away from engagement with media texts, be it by technology and/or the insatiable thirst of a culture of attractions, it's priceless to find an actor keeping it real.

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