VMF Hits The Boards with Ragone’s “Purgatory Trial”

The Vito Marcantonio Forum (VMF), which has employed street art, poetry, film musical spoken work, and speech dramatizations in reviving the forgotten radical congressman, recently expanded its repertoire with a one-man theatrical production written and rendered by founder and co-chair Roberto Ragone. 

The VMF, in collaboration with World of Art Productions presented “The Purgatory Trial of Vito Marcantonio” at the Producers Club Theaters and Bar on Manhattan's West 44th Street. 

Ragone also wrote the play, the presentation of which was prefaced by remarks from VMF co-chair Gerald Meyer. Art Bernal, no stranger to VMF art happenings, directed. 

Marcantonio endured epithets throughout his life, but at least he was able to defend himself, a task he embraced and executed abley. The arch conservative Cardinal Spellman chose the dark moment of Marc’s death to heap another idignity upon him by denying burial in a Catholic cemetery. 

Roberto Ragone as Congressman Vito Marcantonio.

Ragone’s work reopens the case and gives Marcantonio the chance to defend himself in purgatory against Spellman’s cowardly act that was denied him in the material world. “Purgatory” reproduced a Marcantonio eager to train the verbal and tactical skills that could cow his opponents in life, on his case for entry to heaven. 

Ragone’s work included excerpted speeches Marcantonio gave to Congress and dramatized specific incidents in his life. The texts are carried in a lawyer’s portfolio, for Marcantonio was a barrister, and each makes a case for the Christian deeds easily read into his political work. 

The play  includes Paul Robeson’s eulogy to Marcantonio, a back-and-forth with his childhood acquaintance, mobster Tommy Luchesse, and his successful courtroom defense of W.E.B. DuBois who had been accused of being a foreign agent at the height of the Red Scare.

A  news report from a Marcantonio campaign rally at 116th Street and Lexington Avenue - Marc’s Lucky Corner - are all part of the tapestry woven by Ragone in telling the congressman’s remarkable, breathless story. 

A review written by VMF members Gary Bono and Gabe Falsetta was run in “La Voce di New York” and subsequently picked up by other outlets such as “We the Italians,” "The Indypendent," and "People's World."   Meyer and World of Art Productions pledged that "The Purgatory Trial of Vito Marcantonio will soon be revived for a longer run.

Ragone, who along with Bono, also represented the VMF at a conference on Marcantonio convened in Picerno, Italy, birthplace of his mother, has had a year of living daringly, also had an article profiling is broad-gauge efforts as an artist in “L’Idea Magazine.  

All of which transpired in the wake of his father Arsenio Ragone’s death in November 2018. 

“My father was passionate about life and brought a certain artistry and entertainment value to his singing, dancing, banter/comedy, and even his merchandising, whether it was transacting over livestock as a young man in Teggiano, Salerno, Italy or selling imported Italian shoes to customers in the Bronx,” said Roberto in announcing his loss. 

We extend our sincerest condolences.

Arsenio Ragone

June 7, 1924 - November 29, 2018

"The Goodfather (A Novel): The Rising Fall of the Marvelous Marcantonio," can be found here: MARC LIVES.