“My life is unhappy. I want to change it and I don’t know how.” That’s the subtext of a lot of American drama, and several productions currently on and Off-Broadway explore this trope of angst with insight and compassion. One is a neglected classic from Tennessee Williams, the poet of the frustrated and lonely. Yet, surprisingly, the Williams play is the most optimistic and life-affirming of the bunch.
We associate Williams’s heroines such as Amanda Wingfield, Blanche DuBois, and Alexandra Del Lago with delusion and disappointment. But Serafina Delle Rosa, the passionate seamstress of The Rose Tattoo, overcomes her illusions and finds happiness in facing the truth. Williams called Tattoo his “love-play to the world” and wrote it in celebration of his relationship with his lover Frank Merlo.
Intended for Anna Magnani who would win an Oscar for the 1955 film version, the play is a comic-tragic ode to the power of love to transcend tragedy. Serafina, an Italian immigrant on the Gulf Coast, withdraws from the world when her truck-driver husband is killed while transporting illegal drugs for gangsters. Her teenage daughter is becoming a woman, and Serafina’s heart is revived by a sweet, clumsy clown named Alvaro Mangiacavallo (Italian for “Eat a horse”). Initially she stubbornly resists the reality of her child’s growing up, her dead husband’s infidelity, and Mangiacavallo’s advances by railing against her community, but gradually she succumbs to romance.
Overshadowed by Williams’s powerhouses The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tattoo is a gentle, funny romance and seldom performed. The current production at Roundabout Theater Company is only the third Broadway revival (Maureen Stapleton starred in the 1951 original and the 1966 revival, Mercedes Ruehl headlined a 1995 version). Trip Cullman’s luminous production, previously seen at the Williamstown Theater Festival, gives Marisa Tomei’s intense Serafina plenty of air and space (reinforced by Mark Wendland’s lyrical set, though he does crowd the back of the stage with a flock of superfluous plastic flamingoes). The comic moments which easily could have been too broad are lightly played. Tomei seamlessly makes the transition from wild, tantrum-throwing virago to gentle, desperate widow. Emun Elliott captures Alvaro’s tenderhearted toughness and Ella Rubin infuses the daughter Rosa with determination and sass.
