How does one determine the material that would be a good fit for a musical adaptation? If a range of topics, such as America’s founding fathers to re-creating animated movies to adapting comic book characters can be done - why not take a mobster flick set in the 1960s and pull that onstage with some big Broadway numbers? As it turns out, some material translates better onscreen than onstage and A Bronx Tale (1993) is an example of an excellent film that becomes confounding on the Broadway musical stage (although the story did begin as a one man play, written and performed by Chazz Palminteri in an off-Broadway theater). Despite that fact, Robert De Niro’s directorial debut stands on its own merit as a compelling portrait of a young man growing up in New York City amongst mobsters, racial tensions between neighborhoods, and bursts of reckless violence.