Recipe for Love

by Toby Zinman

Jilline Ringle has been singing and cooking for six years, up and down the East Coast, in her signature show, Mondo Mangia. This Philly run will be the last for a while, since the "Six-Foot Amazon from Hell Whom All Men Desire" needs time to work on something new. So, catch it while you can, since it would be a shame to deprive yourself of this banquet of a show.

In her lace dress with a circle pin and wearing her Friday apron (with a lobster design—it's Friday, so no meat), Ringle stands in a kitchen designed by Tony Ferrieri that is the essence of rowhouses in the 1950s. Folding and refolding a dishtowel, she sings lots of songs, accompanied by the excellent Owen Robbins. Some of the songs are archival, some are original—there's a hilarious chicken rap—and some are familiar, like "That's Amore" and "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening."

And she talks—reminiscing about her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother and the great Italian heritage of food-as-love and love-as-food. The stories are full of perfect details (a plaid beanbag ashtray balanced on the arm of a lawn chair!) and vivid characters who lived down the street and came to the backyard parties, back in the day before people put up fences. The 35-pound lasagna that took a week to make. The color-coded Tupperware. The poodle who understood Italian. The lime Jell-O mold the lone Protestant neighbor brought as a salad.

And all the while, she's cooking macaroni (not "pasta," for cryin' out loud) with broccoli and ricotta. It takes the better part of the two-hour show to make the food, and then she feeds the audience (a fork wrapped in a napkin is on every seat when you arrive). There are little bowls, too, but the audience was eating out of her hand long before the meal.

Ringle is not merely a force of nature, but a chanteuse with an impressive voice and a comedienne who is not afraid to mock herself. She provides abbondanza, for which we can say both grazie and brava.

MONDO MANGIA Through Oct. 31, 1812 Productions at Independence Studio on 3, Walnut St. Theatre, Ninth and Walnut sts, 215-592-9560