Saint Michael's Playhouse: Over the River and Through the Woods

By Joe DiPietro

On the New Jersey side of the Hudson River live both sets of Nick Cristano’s Grandparents. Nick, a single, Italian-American marketing executive living in Manhattan, routinely visits his four grandparents in Hoboken every Sunday for family dinner since his parents retired and moved to Florida.  As their only close relative, Nick’s grandparents inundate him with family tradition and lots of food. When Nick announces he is being promoted and moving to Seattle, his grandparents are devastated and quickly concoct a series of hilarious schemes to keep Nick from leaving, including introducing him to the woman of his dreams.

The play’s author Joe DiPietro is an American playwright, and lyricist, best known for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Memphis, for which he won the Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score. He also wrote the long-running Off-Broadway musical I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, and Over the River and Through the Woods, which played Off-Broadway at the John Houseman Theatre for 800 performances over two years.