"A brash, overstuffed cartoon of a memory play about an Italian-American family in 1979 Greenwich Village...Directed by Mr. Messina for the Abingdon Theater Company, the production is anything but subtle...'Room' means to be a play about how Carl became a writer. But grown-up Carl is awfully bland...What the play mainly becomes instead, in the hands of Mr. Cantone and the very fine Ms. Tribuzio, is a brother-sister story of ferocious devotion."
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"It is raunchy and inconsequential. Sometimes, it is also hilarious...The laughs, assembled in unexpected ways by writer-director Charles Messina, are fast and furious, concealing the fact that there isn’t much of anything else going on here. Sometimes the one-liners suffice. What they say about the possibility of living long enough to someday see a black president in the White House is worth the price of admission...Messina makes each member of the Morelli clan as human as they are obnoxious."
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"While it’s sweet to see [Ralph Macchio] venture out in a small off-Broadway show, you wish he’d picked a better one than 'A Room of My Own'...The weirdest thing about Charles Messina’s autobiographical play is how radically different the two Carls are. The grown-up one is soft-spoken and appears fundamentally nice, while the young one is a toxic, profanity-spewing kid. Maybe the real show is what happened to Carl on the way to adulthood."
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"'A Room of My Own' is a truly hilarious memoir of growing up Italian-American in New York City. That doesn't mean it isn't also heartbreaking. Messina introduces us to a world in which comedy and tragedy go hand in hand...While his script occasionally feels half-finished, Messina's production is exquisitely detailed...Despite a slack plot, Messina's dialogue crackles with wit and vulgarity. Even in the most dramatic moments, a hilarious profanity-laced tirade is never far off."
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"The characters in Charles Messina's new play are so unruly, not even he can control them. No matter how much he—and we—may want them to shut up, they insist on venting, usually at the top of their voices...It's possible that another director might have gotten more modulated performances from the cast, but Messina has encouraged them to keep the action at a wearyingly unsustainable pitch."
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"Messina seems to be serving up a slice of life, but there's barely a plot; for that matter, there are barely any events...It's more a series of skits...Things like this could matter less if the characters and their world were more vivid, but they're a collection of stock characters with stock accents...'A Room of My Own' comes across as just as aimless as it does derivative."
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"Little Carl (Nico Bustamante) and Uncle Jackie (Mario Cantone) pretty much steal the show which is more a sitcom with a constant barrage of F-bombs than the moving, introspective memory play it wants to be...Unfortunately the rest of the cast don't have young Mr. Bustamante's charm or Mr. Cantone's acting prowess and experience...Except for the scenes dominated by Uncle Jackie a lot of the comedy falls flat."
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"Rip-roaringly hilarious with the sort of language that needs an R rating. However, from the delighted reaction of the audience at the performance under review, the dialogue peppered with curses and four-letter words did not faze them one bit...Messina uses an interesting Pirandellian device which is only partially successful...This is a play that will entertain you while you are in the theater and stay with you after you leave for its authenticity."
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