Laughing Blues: Charly Chiarelli’s Cu’Fu?

Abstract

Charly Chiarelli’s Cu’Fu? is something of a phenomenon. First produced as part of Artword Theatre of Toronto’s Festival of the Human Voice in May 1995, this one-man show about a Sicilian boy who grows up Canadian in working-class Hamilton has gone on to performances across the country and a broadcast on Bravo TV. Yet here in Hamilton, where I saw performances at the Ontario Workers Arts and Heritage Centre in September 1998 and December 1999, the show felt more like a huge family gathering than an artistic sensation. Italian Canadian friends tell me that as soon as it is known that the show is coming back to Hamilton, people who have already seen it three times start buying blocks of tickets, knowing that they will easily find sisters, brothers, cousins and aunts who want to join in the fun. 1 Some of them even invite mangia cake relatives and friends like me, who are fascinated by the prospect of seeing a performance that elicits such a profound sense of recognition in the Italian Canadian community. Perhaps, we think, we will understand a little more about the traditional Italian families that are so much a part of our friends’ lives if we just hear Charly Chiarelli tell this story about his. Perhaps we will even be able to join in the nostalgia for the warm family life of Italian childhood that reviewers so often mention when they talk about the show (see “Reviews and Articles”). Perhaps, for the space of a performance, we will even feel that we are part of this big Italian Canadian family and that their warm and supportive past is our past too.