Writers and Composers: Lucrezia Galeone, Virginia Ruspini and Ben Barrow
Director: Molly Rolfe
Con brio!
Bold, vivacious and sparky, La Bella Bimba! is a comedy and cabaret-laced tale charting the challenges faced by two aspiring young Italian performers setting out to make their fortunes in 1920s New York. The audience is transported from sleepy, religious San Michele (a rural Italian ‘everytown’) to ‘Ziegfield Follies’ Broadway via New York’s darkest and most dangerous alleys, by brave ‘Bimbas’ Carlotta (Lucrezia Galeone) and co-conspirator Cecilia (Sarah Silvestri).
The pair are perfectly cast, Galeone bringing her passion for commedia del’arte and the physical/political comedies of Dario Fo and Franca Rame, and Silvestri her soaring operatic vocals, all honed at illustrious drama schools in Italy and the UK. They’re supported by an equally talented, professional and amusing musical trio: guitarist Ben Barrow, pianist Michele Maria Benvenuto and percussionist Tasha Fish.
A series of scenarios propels the Bimbas, attired in combat corsetry, through every stage of the immigrant thespian experience: rough seagoing transport (effectively evoked by flailing arms and Titanic posturing), initial elation, egregious abuse, dead-end work, despair, chance breaks, repeated failure and harsh reviews.
They proceed according to three proclaimed elements: “Armonia, Divertimenti, and Sensualità”: “Harmony, Fun and Flirting” and deliver them all with cheeky self-confidence and Italian verve. It’s a recipe for success that allows them to create glamorous entertainment despite the city’s ‘vida dura’: grit, grime and grind.
The narrative is slightly baffling at times, simply because the girls are speaking Italian at breakneck speed, as well as a variety of other languages via the filter of Grammelot (a method with roots in medieval European touring theatre): tonal and slangy approximations of whatever language or dialect they fancy using.
But the mimicry is hilariously accurate (Brits don’t get to enjoy being spoofed by foreigners enough!), and the action is engaging and fun because the audience is constantly privy to their close-knit, convivial, chattering relationship. Having to survive in a harsh environment means the Bimbas are not so much thrown together as centrifuged: their sisterhood is powerful. Whatever fate throws at them, the girls remain cheerful and out to enhance the atmosphere, teasing, cajoling and flattering the crowd.
Almost every scene has its own song, some drawn from Italian culture and lore. There’s Pinguino Innamorato, a nonsense song from the 1940s Trio Lescano: the comic lament of a rejected, suicidal seabird, made glamorous with giant pink ostrich fans that serve as wings, headpieces and tailfeathers, fluttered by the Bimbas in turn.
Amor, Dammi Quel Fazzolettino (‘Love, give me that little handkerchief’) is from the popular Sicilian wedding song Che La Luna Mezzo Mare, sung in wistful harmony as the girls scrub laundry, a last-ditch attempt at making money. They wonder whether matrimony might have been a better option… then remember themselves and put on the dresses they’re cleaning to mock the dull, unadventurous girls stuck back at home.
One notable triumphal anthem is American, sung in swish fringed frocks and tiaras, and acknowledging that while “There’s nothing surer: the rich get rich and the poor get poorer”, “In the meantime, in between time, we have fun!” The Bimbas won’t be beaten: they’ll always bounce back.
The singing is highly impressive, and the Bimbas’ voices work as well together as apart. This also holds true for the hoofing and rough-and-tumble clowning: both players throw inventive, dynamic shapes (despite the constricted space) and synchronise perfectly when required.
Delightful, diverting, occasionally poignant and infectiously funny, the show passes very quickly, at one point sending up its own ephemerality with recorded audience feedback in New York accents, including the line: “What a show! I thought it would never stop.”
At a whistlestop hour-long, La Bella Bimba! certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome. There are one or two longueurs involving clownish flowers being handed around (something to do with the pleading / congratulatory nature of audience interaction?), a few overly-obscure plot twists and moments when the girls are just a bit too involved and exclusionary in their own banter, but overall the charming, captivating energy of the piece shines through.
Happily, after this short run, there’s a chance to catch the ensemble in action at the Canal Café Theatre later this month.
Runs until 23 November 2025, then at the Canal Café Theatre, London on 26, 28 and 29 November 2025
