More than just cast size has made Tennessee Williams' 1951 romantic farce "The Rose Tattoo" perhaps the least produced of his full-length works. Even "Camino Real" gets done by adventurous college programs. It's simply that this stereotyped "love play to the world" isn't very good. The script is over-long, full of self-indulgent attempts at folk comedy and poetic detail. Most of the surplus minor characters are merely stereotypes. Only the central figure, Serafina delle Rosa, the wife and then widow of a Sicilian truck driver (and sometime drug smuggler), here played by comedienne Andrea Martin approaches complexity. Martin received kudos for her previous Huntington appearance as Mrs. Siezemagraff in Durang's "Betty's Summer Vacation". This more realistic role is undercut by the author's attempts to capture nuances of an exotic emigrant culture rather beyond his experience and hold them up as some sort of allegory for soul-absorbing love.
This production isn't helped by a directorial approach which involves parading interludes across the stage involving children playing, poetic pronouncements by the neighborhood witch when people aren't chasing her wayward goat, and neighborhood busy bodies who drift in on cue, without establishing any sort of rhythm to the piece. Nicholas Martin's work on individual scenes is often moving, but the total effect of the evening is inconclusive. Retaining the original three act structure and all the author's meanderings doesn't help either. This fifth Broadway outing for William's needed pruning then, and even if shortened, would still suffer from crude characterization which might be true to the period but which plays rather badly today.
The Huntington Theatre Company has assembled quite an ensemble for this revival. Key players, starting withDominic Fumusa as Alavaro Mangiacavallo, the somewhat comical love interest, haven't been seen at HTC since Nicholas Martin's inaugural extravaganza, "Dead End" where he appeared as the gangster. Diego Arciniegas, Artistic Director of the Publick Theatre, who played the sidekick then, now takes on the role of Father De Leo, most concerned that Serafina had her husband cremated so she could keep his ashes. Cheryl McMahon and Bobbie Steinbach, who've had more interesting roles around town this season, attempt to breathe life into the chief nosey neighbors, Guiseppina and Peppina. And multiple IRNE winner, Nancy E. Carroll, who had a heartwrenching scene in "Dead End" as the grieving mother here gets to spout transitional verse and lead the goat.
As Assunta, the herbalist/midwife, Melinda Lopez, last seen here in "A Month in the Country" and whose play "Sonia Flew" will premiere next season in the new BCA/HTC theatre, the Wimberly, is mostly expository. Colleen Quinlan, seen as Mrs. Siezemagraff's daughter in "Betty's...", is joined by Dara Fisher, making a pair of comically erotic local belles off to frolic with the American Legion in New Orleans. Fisher also doubles at an uptight Anglo school teacher, which is one less role than her three in "The Blue Demon", her previous Huntington appearance. Timothy Crowe, a Trinity Rep veteran , makes his Huntington debut in the brief and thankless roles of Doctor and a Traveling Salesman. Much travelled Tina Benko has two brief appearances as Estelle, Serafina's dead husband's mistress. All this experience can't breathe much life into this languid effort.
Two newcomers, Greta Storace and Ryan Sypek play the heroine's daughter Rosa, who is thirteen in the first act and sixteen in the second, and her sailor boyfriend, Jack Hunter. Their scenes, mostly on the forestage, have a certain clarity, though what Williams intended as earthy lust comes off more as teenage infatuation. His writing here is similar to that in his one-acts, and ultimately doesn't fully connect with the main storyline.
The set by James Noone, who did the multi-story set for "Dead End" complete with a water-filled orchestra pit among his other HTC efforts, features a lattice false proscenium with matching wings, a double-sided small house on a revolve which also tracks forward and back plus a ramp leading down into the pit, all backed by a figured cyc and fronted by a gauze act curtain. The interior is realistically decorated almost to excess. Michael Krass, who's done various major shows for HTC starting with "Dead End", has provided costumes which are similarly just a bit too perfect. Both design concepts could have done more with less. Lights and sound by Kevin Adams and Jerry Yager respectively are just about right, and Mark Bennett's original incidental music adds a lot.
This time out, Ms. Martin, for all her impressive stage skills, can't quite carry the whole show, however. The interesting moments in the script are too few and far between, and animal magnetism isn't really her forte. She's best when comic timing is needed, and the audience appreciates every moment when she uses that skill. But there's no great epiphany, and no method acting core to the show as in the original production. So once again, HTC has produced the first high-end summer stock show of the coming vacation season.