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Long Wharf’s ‘Napoli, Brooklyn’ A Furious Family Drama With Little Relief

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The Long Wharf Theatre opened its season in September with “Meteor Shower,” an over-the-top comedy in which a large object falls from the sky.

On the same stage with the same director, it offers “Napoli, Brooklyn,” an over-the-top family drama in which a large object falls from the sky.

The plot of Meghan Kennedy’s new play was workshopped at New York’s White Heron Theatre Company this past summer and returns to New York this June at the Roundabout Theatre, which co-produced this production. It’s about an Italian immigrant couple in 1960 Brooklyn whose three daughters are coming of age — and responding to the domestic abuse they endure from the father.

Then a plane crashes into the neighborhood.

Oh, did I forget to say “spoiler alert”? It helps to know that “Napoli, Brooklyn” takes place in and around Dec. 16, 1960, when planes operated by TWA and United Airlines collided in the air above New York City, raining debris on Park Slope and Staten Island.

The Park Slope plane crash was a real thing. Kennedy uses it as a dramatic device that alters the course of her characters overnight, without having to resort to more gradual storytelling means. The moment of the crash is ingeniously managed with a thunderous noise and a grand jostling of the show’s urban-kitchen set design (by the great Eugene Lee). The accident brings loss, renewed faith and/or a strengthened resolve to the Muscolino family and their neighbors, who in the play’s first act have been struggling with everything from sexual identity issues and family violence to poverty, depression and a deep-rooted cynicism regarding the American Dream.

One of the less chaotic kitchen scenes in the furious drama “Napoli, Brooklyn” at the Long Wharf Theatre.

Alyssa Bresnahan, whom Hartford Stage audiences will remember from “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “A Moon for the Misbegotten” and “Night of the Iguana” during the Michael Wilson regime, plays the devoutly Catholic mother of the searching teen Francesca (Jordyn DiNatale), the socially awkward Tina (Christina Pumariega) and the rebellious Vita (Carolyn Braver). Jason Kolotouros has the thankless one-note role of the vile patriarch who beats and bullies his long-suffering wife, and strong, resilient daughters. Adding some cultural diversity to the mix are Graham Winton and Ryann Shane as an Irish butcher and his daughter (who has her own life questions to answer) and Shirine Babb (from “Disgraced” at the Long Wharf last season) as Tina’s co-worker Celia.

The Muscolino parents talk as if they’ve come from two different regions of Brooklyn, just as the daughters each have distinctly different Brooklyn accents. There’s an overt theatricality to “Napoli, Brooklyn,” which is amplified by some acrobatic fight scenes and the use of a doorway on wheels to denote quick changes of location. Veteran Broadway costume designer Jane Greenwood (whose work also can be seen this month in the national tour of “The Sound of Music” when it comes to the Waterbury Palace) provides a fetching palette of plaid skirts and button-down sweaters that offset the drab apartment setting and no-nonsense black stage floor.

“Napoli, Brooklyn” overstates its main themes with repetitive scenes (including way too many onstage acts of violence against women), cliches, social stereotypes and dialogues that don’t resolve. Structurally, it’s odd — two quiet bits, then an intermission, follow that climactic crash that by all rights should end Act One. The play ends with a quiet conversation between two of the unlikeliest characters who could have been chosen to wrap up the play’s array of emotional subplots. It’s one of those times where you don’t believe a play has actually ended until the lights go out and the cast is taking bows. But a bigger, clearer finish would be hard to come by — the plane has already crashed.

NAPOLI, BROOKLYN by Meghan Kennedy, directed by Gordon Edelstein, is at the Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven, through March 12. Performances are Wednesday at 2 and 7 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $34.50-$89.50. 203-787-4282, longwharf.org.