Cheap as chips. It’s a throwaway remark even though a fish supper these days can cost as much as a set lunch in a half decent restaurant.
When writer Lorenzo Novani’s character Riccardo Luccese inherits his father Adolfo’s chip shop in the east end of Glasgow, he is faced with the puzzle of why prices never went up over the years. Not only has he gained an ancient building with decrepit and dangerous fittings that would give Health and Safety serious nightmares, but there’s a pile of beef dripping boxes containing piles of old tax returns. Was this popular chippy a front for seedier goings on via his Uncle Sandro, who has a line in dodgy jokes about nuns and an antique business in Kilmarnock? Or was his Daddy’s maxim that customers mattered more than fancy premises true?
Dressed in chef’s gingham and with only these tax returns and a couple of sacks of tatties as props, Lorenzo Novani acts out the Luccese family history from Riccardo’s perspective. With enormous skill, he acts out an array of characters, many of whom are based on customers that used to frequent his own family chip shop. From Auntie Jean who has a weekly fritter ordering ritual; to the local wide boys trying to outsmart the new owner; to the Irish priest who officiates at Adolfo’s funeral, where the farce that gives the show its title takes place; to his Italian grandparents, Nono e Nona, Lorenzo Novani captures them all to a tee.
This impassioned one-man show that sits somewhere between storytelling and really imaginative stand-up comedy is about more than the heritage of a chip shop and a rotten set of plastic menus. It shows the tragic impact on a person’s life of being called “sordo e stupido” (deaf and daft) by a parent. But Riccardo’s remote and hard-working Daddy’s hidden legacy to him allows a final fond 'goodnight'.
Much of the material for Cracked Tiles has been drawn from his own father’s struggle with mental ill-health when Lorenzo was a teenager and he is arranging a small scale post-Fringe UK tour as part of The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival in October.
4-28 August (not 5,14 or 26), 5.10pm.