New London — The characters that populated the Garde Arts Center stage on Friday were a diverse and fascinating lot. A swaggering gangster. His band of acolytes with nicknames like Frankie Coffeecake and JoJo the Whale. A hard-working, incorruptible bus driver and his devoted wife. Their 9-year-old son who’s trying to figure out life.

And they were all played by one person: Chazz Palminteri.

The show was “A Bronx Tale,” and here’s the background on that play: Palminteri is now an Oscar-nominated (for “Bullets Over Broadway”) and well-known (for movies like “The Usual Suspects”) actor. Back in the 1980s, though, he was dissatisfied with the roles he was getting. So he wrote his own one-man show, “A Bronx Tale."

It gave him the platform to showcase his performing abilities, and it brought his career to a whole new level.

Palminteri, 69, is out doing that show again, and it’s a triumph of acting — there’s nothing like a one-person production to highlight a performer’s true range. Palminteri told The Day in an interview this past week that he plays 18 characters in “A Bronx Tale,” although it seems like many more when you see the fully formed world he creates onstage.

In this semi-autobiographical work, Palminteri brings to life the story of young Calogero (Palminteri's real first name), who is growing up in the Bronx in the 1960s. His father, Lorenzo, is a bus driver who is proud of being a working man making an honest living. Also in the neighborhood is Sonny, a flashy mobster.

Nine-year-old Calogero sees Sonny shoot and kill a man during a fight over a parking spot. When the police come asking Calogero whether Sonny was the one who pulled the trigger, the boy says no. Sonny becomes a mentor of sorts to Calogero, which his father hates.

The story jumps to 1968, when Calogero is 17, and race enters the picture when he starts dating a girl named Jane, who is Black.

You can tell that so much of “A Bronx Tale” is pulled from Palminteri’s real past: he infuses the people and scenes with the heart and truth of someone who knows them so well. Palminteri captures the contradictions and complexities of the main characters. Sonny, for instance, is not a stereotypical mobster; he offers some good fatherly advice to Calogero and looks out for the boy.

What’s also striking is how all-out Palminteri’s energy is onstage. The pace zooms along as he jumps from role to role, creating believable, fast-paced dialogue between two characters even as he’s playing both of them. One especially notable sequence: An emotional back-and-forth between Sonny and Lorenzo as they argue over Calogero is incredibly moving.

Palminteri is also adept at knowing just when the story needs some lighter comic moments.

After the curtain call and standing ovation Friday, Palminteri briefly told the audience how “A Bronx Tale” came to be. It was an abbreviated version of what he had told The Day:

When he was doing “A Bronx Tale” onstage in the 1980s, movie executives and stars took notice, showing up in force at the LA theater.

Palminteri knew this was his opportunity to make inroads in Hollywood, and he wasn’t about to give up the chance of starring in the movie version. He refused to sell the rights to “A Bronx Tale” unless he was guaranteed that he could write the screenplay and play Sonny. Hollywood suits told him no, arguing that the project needed a star.

Palminteri turned down offer after offer to sell the rights and walk away. But then Robert De Niro saw the stage version and said he wanted to direct a film adaptation — with Palminteri doing the screenplay honors and playing Sonny.

They shook hands, and that was it. The movie came out in 1993 and was a success, kicking off Palminteri’s screen career.

k.dorsey@theday.com