Overview

As the New York Post outlines: "It is set in a real Rome. A Rome you really miss…It is set there because a young, conservative, slightly stuffy American businessman has come to retrieve the body of his father, who was killed in an automobile accident. Confronted with bureaucratic pasta and accustomed to his own business power, he blusters futilely until the arrival of a "professional assistant'—a young Italian who, for a fee, will cut through any red tape. And though we have seen this character, more or less, in many stories about Americans in Italy, Mr. Taylor has created him extra special wonderfully. He is a pimp for all sexes and all variations, and takes his own sex any way you choose. He deals with the bureaucracy as he deals with life—optimistically, high spiritedly and with a sure knowledge of his own childishness. The American businessman also meets a young lady, as he would have to in such a play. She is the daughter of his father's lover, who was killed in the car accident. Nor should it come as a surprise to anyone that they have an affair, that the young man is married, that his wife unexpectedly arrives and that he leaves agreeing to meet her for a month in Italy. Just as her father and her mother had been doing for twelve years…So then what it adds up to is grown-up entertainment…so well done and so basically diverting that it can only be taken for the pleasurable thing it is."