My father's Uncle Tony lived with his entire extended family in Bensonhurst, a still-Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. I remember being a kid down in the cigarette-smoke-filled basement, where all the cousins sat around eating canoli and catching up on family scandals.

This week my mom and I went to see Over the River and through the Woods, a new play about an Italian-American family by Joe DiPietro, the author of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change. It is the story of 29 year old Nick Cristano, whose announcement that he wants to move to Seattle is tantamount to a declaration of war. To his grandparents, Nick's desire to move for professional advancement makes no sense. Why would he, they wonder, want to leave his family? Nick's grandparents' entire reason for being alive was to create a home for their families, and to give to their children and grandchildren all the opportunities that they had had to forego. During the course of the play, they learn, to their sorrow, that they have succeeded in this attempt to elevate their family's prospects; they have raised Nick's expectations so high that he is no longer truly one of them; he needs to move on.

The themes of the play are universal. You don't have to be Italian to wonder what we owe the people who love us, or to ask to what degree we, in the modern day, should arrange our lives to be close to our families. For the grandparents in this play, the answers are obvious. Family is the center, the heart of life. But how many of us live our lives this way today? My siblings are scattered across the globe, from Manhattan to Virginia to Germany. We email each other often, but this is hardly a substitute for weekly family meals. Even Uncle Tony's kids finally moved away.

In addition to grappling with existential questions, the play is extremely funny. The audience was cracking up throughout. In one especially funny scene, Nick tries to play Trivial Pursuit ("that game we don't understand") with his grandparents. Nick's grandparents are perfectly satisfied with vague or inaccurate answers to the game questions. It was a familiar situation taken to a hilarious extreme. However, I found most effective the play's more touching scenes. I had tears in my eyes as Nick's grandfather Frank told about why he had come to America; very moving, too, was Nick's grandmother Aida's description of the things which have given her life meaning. By the end, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

The play's leitmotif is echoed again and again by Nick's grandfather Frank. "Tenga familia," he says. "I have a family." This connotes for him Manhood, Responsibility, a Raison d'Etre. Nick's choices in life underscore the shift in priorities in the younger generation. Ambitious and unfettered by family responsibilities, Nick follows a very different path than his grandparents. With this freedom comes loss, not of family, but of familial intimacy, which is not born of "quality time," but quantity of time. And, as is so often shown, we seldom recognize what we have until we lose it.

NRPÕs spring production ÓOver The River And Through The Woods  by Joe Dipietro opens at The Alley Theatre Friday, April 20th and continues April 21, 27, 28, May 4,5 at 8pm. Special Opening Night Performance with music , light refreshments and cash bar.