Theater: Roman Scamp

Rugantino, a musical transported intact from Rome and sung and spoken in Italian, is a pleasant novelty on Broadway. Unobtrusive English titles are flashed on a narrow screen above the stage to keep the playgoer abreast of action and dialogue. More nearly an operetta than a musical comedy, Rugantino is lavishly and attractively costumed and atmospherically set in Rome in 1830. Its bawdry is innocent, its humor earthy, its love songs are unselfconsciously sentimental.

The show revolves around a picaresque little man hero, Rugantino (Nino Manfredi), who wants to be the kind of I came—I pinched-I conquered-I told male who has always appealed to the Latin imagination as the quintessence of manhood. When he starts his ego building exercises in the bedroom of Rosetta (Ornella Vanoni), that married lady's husband breaks one of Rugantino's fingers as a hint to keep hands off. Apart from palming off his mistress on an aging lecher (Aldo Fabrizi), most of Rugantino's pranks backfire. He tosses a dead cat into an aristocratic wake, and is forced to eat the cooked carcass in an epicurean setting. His Chaplinesque resilience does not fail him. "Could I have a side order of mice?" he asks. An unexpectedly macabre finale silences both hero and show.

Coming from a land where the stones sometimes seem to sing, Rugantino is musically underprivileged, except for a couple of lilting serenades, Ciumachella and Roma. By U.S. standards, the dance numbers are unsophisticated, but one carnival scene with masks and harle quins manages to echo commedia dell'arte. Rugantino's appeal is that it is smilingly content to woo an audience rather than wow it.