Carmela’s Table

In Rossi's second play of his Carpenter's Trilogy, his dramatic portraits of the decorated Italian war hero Silvio's manipulative mother, Filomena, his inexplicably loyal wife Carmela, and the extended family's understanding and supportive neighbours Neva and Dave, are finely drawn variations on what have become pop-culture stereotypes of Italian immigrants. They clearly exist to allow Rossi to peel back the complex layers of Silvio's psyche--to reveal all the classic symptoms of what we now know as post-traumatic stress disorder.

In the play's final cathartic scenes, however, the very human Silvio is forced to understand that to have consistently chosen not to act on what he has always known has also been a choice--one that now finally threatens to overwhelm and destroy his family.