Piccola Cosi Reviews

The reviews are starting to come in for Piccola Cosi and audiences are loving the show.

Here's the first surfacing review from Backstage:

Piccola Cosi
August 18, 2008
By Ronni Reich
Aja Nisenson is one of very few whose travel photos would be fun for someone else to look at. As full of talent as she is of spaghetti, she recalls in vivid, sidesplitting detail her trip through Italy as a 21-year-old virgin who becomes a sought-after jazz singer.

Nisenson is a natural storyteller, with an ear for impersonations and an eye for glamorous and gritty detail. She captures the leering glances and smarmy come-ons of her woefully subpar Casanovas easily, occasionally even seeming more comfortable in their roles than in her own. Elliot B. Quick's staging is lively and fluid

With Nisenson's amori come her songs. Her first scatting experience — all over the place, from opera to bat mitzvah — ties into her discovery that she's dating a heroin addict. "Fever," "I'm Through With Love," and a version of "Blue Moon" that would never fly in a U.S. club round out her coming-of-age experience, sung sweetly and confidently.

And TimeOutNY says:

Description
**** (four stars) Writer-performer Aja Nisenson puts her own spin on the familiar story of an American living abroad in Piccola Cosi (Italian for “small like this”). Like Sarah Silverman, Nisenson dresses her hot self simply—all in black, with comfy sneakers—as she tells of such adventures as singing opera in a jazz club and dating a macho Italian heroin addict. Backed by a double bassist, a drummer and, usually, a pianist—he was trapped on a G train in Brooklyn on the night I saw the show—she warms up with a Jewish scat version of “My Funny Valentine,” then ponders travel as a rite of passage. (For audience members with a little knowledge of Italian, there's more to appreciate, but Nisenson ensures that nothing gets lost for lack of translation.) The show paints an engaging portrait of that special time of life when nascent adults go overseas to find themselves, and end up getting into cars with strangers. Sexual awakening à la Room with a View, here we…come.—Anna King, Freelance Writer

I do hope you are able to come to one of the performances. Everyone from friends and family to critics to casting directors have attended and it's been a lot of fun. You can most likely buy tickets at the door.