Customer Reviews

Don Giovanni: A Play

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"Don Giovanni" is my first encounter with Dan Fante the playwright. Several months ago I heard Fante read some of his poetry at an event where Rob Woodard read from his "Heaping Stones," a terrific short novel about a struggling writer. Dan Fante's play turned out to be just as engrossing as his poetry.

This play will engage you the moment you begin reading the opening scene, where the bitter, physically fragile yet verbally brutal character of Johnathan Dante demands coffee from his good-humored, determined wife Catherine. The play is saturated with sharp dialogue among the family members, each of whom struggle with controlling their biting anger and resentment.

Dan Fante suprisingly leaves his readers with a sense of hope after ravaging them with his story of familial pain. READ "Don Giovanni," and be amazed at how quickly you begin to reexamine the relationships you have with your own family.

I am a big fan of Dan Fante's novels, poetry and short stories. And this play, which resurrects the Bruno Dante character from the trilogy is a great read. i thought it may be tough to get through a play (lets face it, plays work better on the stage) but Fante's punchy dialogue and black humor make this work a joy to read. Along with Corksucker / Short Dog, this is another winner released this year from the prolific Mr Fante.

If you havent read Dan Fante's stuff before, I urge you to give it a chance. I think it is no eggageration to say he is probably the most vital writer in America right now. A knockout, and something I would love to see performed.

Top notch!

This is the only work of Fante's that I have read so far and I finished it in one sitting. It's a quick burn through a writer's dyfunctional family exhibiting much conflict and anger but also tenderness. The characters are cleanly drawn studies and the storyline easily pulls you into their midst. I would love to see it performed but I absolutely recommend the play as a read.

Don Giovanni


Is a play written by the very talented, novelist, poet, short story writer and playwright Dan Fante.

Fante is the real deal. He tackles the condition of the American Family in crisis, like an older, wiser and ballsier version of Tennessee Williams (whom Dan Fante has listed as an influence). This is a play for our times though: filled with family drama, drug abuse, disease and the malfunction of The Family. Some the concerns of the play remind one of The Death of Ivan Iiyich, written by Tolstoy. The fact that our children hardly ever turn out the way we expect them to be.


Don Giovanni, aka Jonathan is the Patriarch of the Dante house hold, slowly dying of diabetes, he's often grumpy and his wife Catherine is his caregiver. His son Dick, a homosexual, often carry on a witty, brutal and often funny rapport. Dick has been a huge disappointment to Jonathan Dante---once a promising pianist, he gave that up to become a gym teacher. Dad believes it's because of his son's homosexual tendencies that he chose to become a track coach. A perv lurking in boys' shower, hoping to get a glimpse young private parts.

In the opposite, Jonathan is often doting to his son, Bruno, who is a successful actor in New York. A man who has a huge alcohol problem, and whom Jonathan has had to bail out a few times.

The dialogue amongst the characters in the play is often clever, witty, cynical and often poetic.

Bruno and his antagonistic wife Agnes, and their children convene, for the patriarch's birthday. Agnes holds back nothing, in accounting her husband's misadventures: treatment centers, recovery homes, pre-paid romantic escapades, booze and cocaine. Which often seems to agititate the elder Dante, who sees that his son is trying to change his ways by entering a twelve-step program. But Bruno is spared no mercy by Agnes understandably. Considering he would have to abandon his family obligations by entering treatment. Agnes often chucks down wine while is goes through her acerbic, funny and brutal soliloquizes.

This is one play, that sizzles with dialogue, which is a Dan Fante hallmark. Anyone who has ever read the man's novels, poetry or short stories can attest to that. He pays close attention to the way that people speak, and captures the slang and poetry of people, much like a painter with a brush in a naturalistic tradition.


One is educated through pain, like all great works of art; by this very powerful drama, about a very great writer's family.