After an extended sold-out run on the west coast, writer, performer and Queens resident Louie Liberti takes his one man show Almost Made back home to its roots in New York. Almost Made is the endearing story of Louie's "father-influenced" life where the script acts as a guide taking the audience through various father-son occurrences seen through the eyes of Louie as a young boy, teen and adult.
Almost Made opens with Louie eulogizing his father, Charlie, during his funeral service and then meticulously weaves scenes back and forth between the present moment and flashbacks of memories shared with his father. It's within the first 15 minutes of the play that Louie sets the tone for the rest of the performance. In the first flashback, Louie remembers when he was a small boy, calling out for his father in the middle of a summer night to help him open a window. As the scene proceeds, the audience can infer how an otherwise mundane interaction between a father and son was instead viewed as an opportunity for Louie's father to teach him about life. Rather than using his adult strength to open the window, Charlie urges his son to try again, only this time with a positive attitude. Louie, although physically in the form of an adult, effortlessly embodies a young boy possessing eyes full of innocence and awe of his father. Mouthing the mantra, "I can do it, I can do it," Louie focuses and opens the window – and a hero complex is born. As a child and teen, Louie sees his father as an almost larger than life character whose mystery and simplicity somehow holds all the answers.
Louie places his father on a pedestal from an early age and, unlike most boys progressing from boy to teen, his father never leaves that position in Louie's mind. Louie honestly considers his father "cool" – a large accomplishment for any father to have with his son. This positive impression continues to grow when Louie starts working with his father on the weekends at the family-owned club, "Mr. L's." Working with his father, Louie now views him in a whole new light – at the top of his game surrounded by people who have nothing but respect for him. At the after hours nightclub, Charlie easily shows people a good time and teaches Louie that if you treat people well, they'll treat you the same in return. In addition to having entrée into this enticing nightclub world that most 16 year-olds would never see, Charlie scores "forever cool" status when he tells his son not to worry about college; the club would eventually be his as long as he learned the ropes now.
So what went wrong? Why the need for the flashback story of an average man's relationship with his father? The answer is because Charlie fell off the pedestal. Charlie almost had it made - he almost had it all – but soon his world crumbled apart with no way to stop it and Louie was a witness and victim to it all. Louie had to readjust his vision of his father to realize who he actually was – a person instead of an invincible man. If his father wasn't fool-proof, he wasn't either. It's within Almost Made that Louie takes the audience through this personal journey to accept that being a person, filled with skills and faults just like anyone else, is special in its own right. In many ways, Charlie stood out from the average father, but when it was time to draw the bottom line, he was ordinary. An ordinary man facing the same ordinary day to day challenges like money, family and health that any other man would encounter. Through Almost Made, Louie understands that a father doesn't have to be a hero; sometimes being ordinary is enough, sometimes, it's even extraordinary.
Almost Made is a powerful, lethargic experience for Louie Liberti and the audience. It's a true credit to his acting skill to perform something so close to his heart while enveloping the audience with him at the same time. With a minimal set and lighting along with no wardrobe changes, the play is simple, letting the story and acting carry it all. Liberti digs back deep into his memory to embrace how he felt about his father through various stages of the relationship and portrays it out to the audience. Throughout the performance, his body language almost speaks louder than words to show how he idolizes his father. On the other hand, he portrays Charlie as a stoic character. Liberti allows audiences to know that when Charlie speaks, he is meant to be heard; there is almost always more to his words than just the surface message. Almost Made is an autobiographical performance where Liberti relives his father's death and all the other moments that have brought him to this point of feeling acceptance and happiness with his father. He shares this feeling with everyone and audiences leave happy and thankful, knowing they received an inside glance at the act of forgiveness within one's self and to others. Liberti writes in the Stagebill that while creating Almost Made he discovers "even though we are our father's sons, we don't have to grow up to become our fathers. We can just hope to make them proud." Mission accomplished.
