Anyone with half a slice of ham in his DNA who's watched Al Pacino tearing it up in the 1975 Dog Day Afternoon has to have thought to himself, Man, that looks exciting. I'd love to have done that! That probably accounts for the current reincarnation of Dog Day Afternoon as a stage play performed by New York's Barefoot Theater Company. The production was written and directed by its star, Francisco Solorzano, who takes on the role of Sonny, the desperate but not dishonorable man who, with his dull-witted sidekick Sal (John Cazale in the movie, Jeremy Brena here), walks into a bank in Brooklyn on a sweltering August day in 1972, looking to stage a robbery to raise the money for his male lover's sex change operation and winds up at the center of a hostage drama that involves platoons of cops and cheering, jeering crowds getting off on the chaos and energy. (At times, as when--in a scene not duplicated in the play--Pacino's Sonny marches in front of the bank, pumping his arm and screaming "Attica! Attica!" while the crowd, looking for any reason to knock the police, roars its approval, he was practically the event's emcee.)
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