Review: THE ROSE TATTOO Blooms with Warmth and Heartbreak

There's a moment early in the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company's new production of THE ROSE TATTOO when Kristin Witt's Serafina seems to dare the audience to laugh at her devotion and dares us, just as fiercely, not to. That tension between comedy and heartbreak is the needle this whole production has to thread, and under Witt's fearless, generous performance, it threads it beautifully. This isn't a play that makes room for half-measures, and neither does she.

Running now through Aug. 16 at Loyola University's Marquette Theatre, THE ROSE TATTOO is the show TWTC bills as the theatrical event of the New Orleans summer, and anchored by Witt's performance, it absolutely earns that billing. Presented as part of the company's 11th anniversary season, the production leans fully into everything that makes this one of Williams' warmest, funniest and most life-affirming plays. It’s a tonal choice that might seem obvious on the surface but proves trickier in practice. Where "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "The Glass Menagerie" leave audiences wrecked, THE ROSE TATTOO was Williams' gift to himself and to the world. Written as something like a love letter to his longtime partner Frank Merlo and the Sicilian culture Merlo introduced him to, the play vibrates with gratitude and desire. It's the kind of rediscovery TWTC has built its reputation on. This is a company that treats Williams not as a museum piece but as a living, breathing part of the city that shaped him and that he, in turn, shaped.

The story is both absurdly comic and tragic. Serafina, a fiery seamstress living in a tight-knit Sicilian American neighborhood somewhere on the Gulf Coast, has spent three years locked in a religious-domestic cocoon, mourning her truck-driver husband Rosario with the intensity of a saint keeping vigil. She's convinced herself that his was a perfect love and with him a perfect marriage. She swears to anyone who'll listen that the rose tattoo on his chest burned a matching mark onto her own body. Her daughter Rosa has grown up in this shrine to the dead, and now that she is awakening to romance and independence, Serafina's grip is suffocating them both. Then Alvaro Mangiacavallo arrives, another truck driver, built like Rosario and cracks the whole careful structure open.

Kristin Witt as Serafina Delle Rose. Photo by Brittney Werner.

What makes this work is that this production never treats Serafina's devotion as stupid. It's passionate, yes. Possibly delusional, sure. But it's never mocked. Director Augustin J. Correro has said that "Serafina means every word she says," and the production takes that seriously, which is where the comedy stems from. She's not wrong to grieve; she's not wrong to feel abandoned. The joke isn't on Serafina. The joke is the cosmic unfairness of it all, the way life insists on continuing whether or not we're ready. And that's where Witt is extraordinary.

Witt is the reason this production achieves what it sets out to do. Her Serafina spends the play's early scenes locked in mourning so completely it borders on the surreal. Witt finds the dark comedy in that without ever once making Serafina a punchline or a figure of fun. Watch her face when she's describing her husband's infidelities to her neighbor. Then watch as she catches herself and pivots back to defense, reconstructing the narrative of a perfect man. It's all in the eyes, and it's heartbreaking.

When Nick DiJulio's Alvaro Mangiacavallo arrives, Witt lets Serafina's entire world crack and reorganize. You see the moment she recognizes him as a threat to her carefully constructed grief, as well as the exact moment that threat becomes a possibility. She plays it as genuine disorientation, a woman whose body is remembering how to want something before her mind can catch up. The shift from fury to tenderness to full-bodied laughter sometimes happens within a single scene, and Witt makes every beat of it feel real, felt, earned. DiJulio gives Alvaro just enough sweetness under the bluster to make the turnaround not just funny but touching. He's not trying to replace Rosario, just to exist beside her and ask her to exist beside him. Their ending is among the happiest in Williams’ work.

The design team creates a production that feels genuinely considered, down to every last detail. Nathan Arthur's scenic design creates a Sicilian American home that feels lived-in and specific, where nothing is wasted, and everything means something. Diane K. Baas's lighting is exceptional work. The play moves through different times of day and different emotional registers, and the lights shift with it. It's subtle work, but it's doing heavy lifting in shaping how we see the characters. Brik Allen's costume design gives every character on stage texture and specificity. This is a working-class community, and the clothes reflect that. Nick Shackleford's sound design keeps the neighborhood alive in the background. It's done so carefully that you almost don't notice it until you imagine the scene without it, and then you realize how much it's doing.

The rest of the cast fills out Serafina's world with real conviction and specificity. Lauren Van Mullem as her daughter Rosa captures both the girl's hunger for life and her complicated love for her mother. She's not rebelling in a thoughtless manner; she's struggling to become her own woman while honoring where she comes from. The scene where Rosa stands up to her mother and claims her own right to desire is played with real tenderness on both sides.

From left: Gwendolyn Foxworth, Janet Shea and Alex Martinez-Wallace. Photo by Brittney Werner.

Janet Shea is wonderful as the Strega, the old woman of the neighborhood whose role seems to be dispensing a kind of folk wisdom that one both trusts and resents. New Orleans theatre veteran Gwendolyn Foxworth anchors the ensemble of neighbors and gossips who provide the play's comic cushion. This group of women knows everything, says everything and does it all with love even as they're driving each other crazy. A particular standout is Alex Martinez-Wallace as the Black Goat, who delivers physical comedy with infectious energy and moves freely in and out of the fourth wall. The goat becomes less an animal and more a messenger of pure comedic possibility. These are the people and creatures who make a neighborhood a community, and the production treats them all with real affection. You believe in their world, in how they orbit Serafina and how she orbits them.

With its excellent ensemble, thoughtful direction, evocative design and a luminous central performance from Kristin Witt, THE ROSE TATTOO is a triumph. Witt gives a performance that will stay with you. Productions like this are the kind that remind you why you go to live theatre in the first place, when you can believe in heartbreak and possibility in the same moment. If you only make time for one show in New Orleans this summer, make it this one.

THE ROSE TATTOO runs through Aug. 16 at the Marquette Theatre on the campus of Loyola University New Orleans, with performances Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $45-$58 ($10 for Loyola University students) at twtheatrenola.com.

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