“You know that present you brought us? The one we don’t know how to use?” That line — which refers to a DVD player — sums up the difficulty Nick has with his Italian-American grandparents in “Over the River and Through the Woods,” the new show at Insight. Of course they love and want to help each other, but they barely speak the same language.
Playwright Joe DiPietro’s sweet, sentimental show looks at a crisis in the family. Nick, whose career is going places, has been offered a promotion that will take him to Seattle. His Hoboken grandparents — who live just two doors from each other and who focus all their attention on Nick since his parents moved to Florida — will move heaven and earth to make him stay.
The grandparents probably are too protective. But Nick — who turns into a child in his grandparents’ suffocating house (nicely designed by Chris Regelsen, right down to the basement windows) — hardly makes the best case for independence.
The ensuing conflict, which tickles funny bones and jerks a few tears, prompts director John Contini to draw quick, bright performances from his cast: Matt Pentecost as Nick, Tom Murray, Maggie Ryan, Jerry Vogel and Tommy Nolan as the grandparents, Ariel Roukaerts as a nurse.
Nolan is a particular treat. With her bustling gait and distinctive diction — saying “Nick’las” for her grandson’s name, “bee-you-ti-ful” to describe a piece of veal — she nails the kind of busy, birdlike woman who sustains a whole family even though she barely seems capable of looking out for herself. They come in all ethnic varieties.
