"THE ROSE TATTOO" at Goodman Theatre
BY LUCIA MAURO
Serafina delle Rose – Tennessee Williams’ wild force-of-nature protagonist in "The Rose Tattoo" – may have imagined the title skin engraving of her late husband Rosario burned into her own breast. But this provocative image should not serve as a justification for setting the stage ablaze in lipstick-pink rose petals framed by a giant gaping flower enclosure more in tune with "Little Shop of Horrors" than Serafina’s humble dressmaking shop.
In the Goodman Theatre’s symbolically overwrought production of the already metaphorically indulgent "The Rose Tattoo," director Kate Whoriskey extracts Williams’ obvious fading flower/blossoming love dichotomy and filters it through the theatrical equivalent of a spoon into which one blows filmy water to create enormous bubbles. Audiences may think they’ve been sucked into a half-realized magical-realist hallucination or catapulted into the feverish heart of the play’s grief-stricken protagonist – or locked inside a deconstructed Victoria’s Secret store.
Scenic designer Derek McLane executes to the hilt Whoriskey’s abstracted splattering of one of Williams’ more celebratory dramas. A nausea-inducing pink color scheme of scattered petals drifts across a stage tented in floral-shaped parachute fabric and surrounded by suspended dress forms and clear plastic-wrapped palm trees. We’ve unmistakably entered a landscape of the psyche, further heightened by Robert Wierzel’s cotton-candy lighting, as elusive as the play’s Gulf Coast setting somewhere between New Orleans and Mobile.
But Williams’ 1950 work – written to extol his own relationship with long-time companion Frank Merlo (a Sicilian American) – does not belong in the realm of vivisected hearts and unpeeled passion or grief.
"The Rose Tattoo" is an earthy story of a Sicilian immigrant seamstress, who has devoted her entire being to her truck-driver husband Rosario – propelled by the belief that he has been faithful to her. When Rosario is killed while smuggling contraband, Serafina’s spirit – so inextricably linked to her husband -- becomes extinguished. Yet she fiercely prays for a sign from a homemade shrine to the Madonna even as she comes grandly unhinged (abusing customers, running around in a slip, holding her teenage daughter captive).
It isn’t until Serafina meets another Sicilian truck driver (with her husband’s body but "the face of a clown") and is given proof that Rosario was having an affair with one Estelle Hohengarten that she can break free of her self-imposed shell of devotion, once held secure by superstition and delusion. From the now-broken urn of her husband’s ashes rises Serafina’s singular sexual identity.
The operatic story certainly does not spare the heated hyperventilating or the requisite breast-beating Williams felt he had to attach to Sicilian characters. Yet, not unlike the exquisite 1955 film version of "The Rose Tattoo" (starring Anna Magnani as Serafina), the play speaks most compellingly when rooted in a reality of its time and the immigrants it portrays. Even if Williams intended the work to exist in a fantastical, unbridled sphere, it’s not quite a Fellini film.
The circus-like quality of the piece and its stock characters (from a fretting priest to Sicilian folkloric figures of the Strega, who bestows the "evil eye," and the sexually suggestive Goat, which implies cuckolding) mesh uncomfortably with its heartbreaking human story. And this allegorical clutter grows increasingly tired and absurd – not smartly absurdist.
In fact, the production’s laughable quotient is quite high – especially the chorus of black-clad Sicilian matrons castigating Serafina like a gaggle of Prince Spaghetti Mamas on the verge of shouting "Anthony!" Mike Nussbaum’s en travestie turn as the Strega – with his long white wig and small round sunglasses – cackles and curses in bombastic Al Pacino strains; and Sean Blake’s balletic Goat – with surprisingly unoriginal animal-inspired choreography by Randy Duncan – appears to have leapt in from a Nijinsky revival.
So many mixed metaphors and hackneyed cliches push this play over the precipice of truth-unveiling absurdism. Whoriskey – not unlike her unbearably over-the-top staging of "Drowning Crow" at Goodman – gets stuck somewhere between farce and neo-realism. In the end, Serafina comes across as a tightly wound yet volatile lunatic surrounded by plot devices parading around as pesky characters –notably, the buffoonish gossips Flora and Bessie (played in full-blown caricature by the usually textured Susan Hart and Lisa Dodson). The fact that Serafina climbs what looks like a rock-climbing wall from North Face – no doubt an allusion to Sicily’s Mount Etna – makes her look even more foolish, not redeemed.
As Serafina (a role written with the hungry sexual candor of a hot-blooded man), Alyssa Bresnahan maintains a fanatically controlled presence and speaks with an authentic Mediterranean cadence. But, because her performance is so stylized, it becomes non-human; she’s more crazy lady than a misunderstood woman dangling between devotion and guilt-stained self-indulgence.
Serafina’s comical but endearing lover, Alvaro Mangiacavallo (the last name, which means "eat a horse" in the most sexual sense of the term, is Williams’ devious in-joke) is played erratically by John Ortiz. It’s tough to like the character when Ortiz enters screaming his lungs out, his saliva spraying at least the first four rows. Then he curls up in a ball and cries his eyes out for about five minutes. As if we haven’t been exposed to enough fluids, his character blows his nose on stage without a tissue – all the more offensive for its barbaric implications. Ortiz settles down into his humble but determined character later on – but it was hard to grasp his redeeming power over Serafina.
Ian Brennan delivers the most sensitive and understated performance as Jack Hunter, the sailor in love with Serafina’s daughter Rosa (a tragically earnest turn by Meredith Zinner). The low-key and charismatic Felicia P. Fields adds depth to the superficially written Assunta. But Greg Vinkler’s vapors-suffering Father De Leo should win an award for his brilliant pacing when he describes the blue dress Serafina once wore to church – "like a lady wearing a piece…of the weather."
This is a loud and broad interpretation of a play that – removed of its chronic ardor -- resides tenderly and erotically within the human heart. Here, the pinks alone are enough to send one into convulsions. And, sadly, common and over-stated Sicilian myths of underworld activities, sexual prowess, religious fanaticism and old mal’occhio-conjuring women in black dresses are promoted with unapologetic volcanic force.•
"The Rose Tattoo" runs through February 15 at Goodman Theatre (Albert Ivar Mainstage), 170 N. Dearborn. Tickets: $30-$50. Call 312-443-3800 or log onto www.goodman-theatre.org.
