The St. Leonard Chronicles

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The St. Leonard Chronicles

By (author): Steve Galluccio

From the award-winning author of stage hits Mambo Italiano and In Piazza San Domenico comes a delicious, saucy new comedy about Terry and Robert, a young couple with roots in the Italian neighbourhood of St. Leonard in Montreal. The couple’s newly renovated duplex has barely a hint of gilded rococo – not just a cultural infraction, but also an ominous sign that all is not as it should be. Eager to break free of family ties that are bound too tight, Terry and Robert announce they’re moving to the affluent anglophone suburb of Beaconsfield – tantamount to committing a mortal sin in the eyes of their more traditional Italian relatives. When they confess their plans to their parents over dinner one night, floodgates open to other unspoken desires and revelations, turning conservative St. Leonard values upside down.

The St. Leonard Chronicles opened the 2013–14 season at Montreal’s venerable Centaur Theatre and sold out before its run. The play was extended and went on to sell more than twenty thousand tickets. The French version of the Chronicles, translated by Galluccio himself, premieres at Theâtre Jean Duceppe in Montreal in December 2014 and then in 2015 embarks on a twenty-four-city tour.

Cast of 4 women and 3 men.

AUTHOR

Steve Galluccio

Steve Galluccio started his career in the Montreal underground theatre scene in 1990. He burst into the mainstream with Mambo Italiano, one of the most successful plays in Canadian theatre history. The play was turned into a movie which became an international hit, sold in more than fifty-three countries, including the U.S. Galluccio followed Mambo with the Gemini Award-winning TV series Ciao Bella. Ciao Bella was also broadcast in Europe and the United States. Galluccio’s second feature film Surviving My Mother won the audience favourite award at the Montreal Film Festival, and was featured in many prestigious film festivals all over the world. Galluccio’s third feature, the bilingual Funkytown opened in January 2011. In Piazza San Domenico, Galluccio’s ninth play, was the number one comedy in Montreal in the fall of 2009, selling out most of its extended run. In 2012, Galluccio released Montréal à la Galluccio, a whimsical guide of his beloved hometown of Montreal.

Reviews

“After Galluccio’s play Mambo Italiano became the most successful local English-language play from Montreal in almost half as century – and the most successful ever in the history of the Centaur Theatre – The St. Leonard Chronicles quickly became the second-most successful.”
– Montreal Gazette

“Full of crowd-pleasing, hyper-local jokes – mostly about Montreal’s Italian communities, which encompass Galluccio’s biggest fans. There are gags about awful homemade wine, family vacations to Wildwood on the Jersey Shore, and rivalries between neighbourhoods such as Little Italy and Ville Émard (which here gets insulted via a French scatological pun as “Ville à Marde”).”
– Globe & Mail

“The St. Leonard Chronicles were like a great antipasto in a family-run restaurant in Little Italy. There was laughter and plenty of it as the young, yuppie couple in the play tries to announce that they wish to leave the enclaves of Italian life in St. Leonard and move to (gasp!) Beaconsfield … scandal for spice and finally a few tears to leaven the mix.”
– RoverArts.com