Theater Review: Tennessee Williams’ ‘The Rose Tattoo,’ From the Roundabout Theatre Co.

At first glance, Marisa Tomei would not seem to be an ideal candidate to play the lead in Tennessee Williams’ 1950 play, The Rose Tattoo. After all, the playwright’s state directions refer to Serafina Delle Rose as “plump,” and the movie star, God bless her, is not yet at the stage where her figure would charitably be labeled zaftig.

But in other ways, the role clung as well to her as the clothes her widowed seamstress character knitted in the Roundabout Theatre Co. revival that closed last week at the American Airlines Theater. Like Serafina, Ms. Tomei is of Sicilian ancestry (even if she is not a native of Italy), unlike the Broadway originator of the role, Irish-American Maureen Stapleton. She is closer to the character’s age, too, than Ms. Stapleton (54 vs. 24). Her screen roles demonstrate her comfort in expressing this character’s erotic instincts. Most of all, she can segue expertly between tragic and comic modes, as Williams could write when inclined (which, more often than not, he wasn’t).

In a sense, it is surprising that Broadway had not gotten around to reviving The Rose Tattoo much sooner. Not only did the role of Serafina win Anna Magnani a Best Actress Oscar in 1955, but the play itself won Williams a Best Play Tony Award.

Yet it took the Roundabout a while to stage it—as the company’s ninth production of a Williams play, it had to wait its turn behind The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, written when the playwright was well into a creative and popular decline. It might not have made it this time either, except that Tomei and director Trip Cullman had proved that it remained a viable theatrical property with an acclaimed 2016 production at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

The Rose Tattoo, you see, may well be Williams’ most optimistic play. In Serafina’s hope for a second chance of love after the sudden death of both her husband and the unborn child she lost in shock afterward, the playwright gave dramatic life to his own giddy new lease on life at the start of his relationship with Frank Merlo, who became his most significant and long-lasting romantic partner. 

The Italian-American Merlo also sparked the slightly unusual milieu of this play. Like much of his work, it is set in the South, but the drawling denizens of the region take a back seat this time to Sicilian immigrants on the Gulf Coast. The women of the community, headed by matriarch Assunta (played by an affecting Carolyn Mignini), form a kind of chorus of deep concern surrounding Serafina.

Even with ths different setting and character types, Williams could not help returning to his traditional themes of illusion and constraint-overpowering passion. But this time, a wounded female protagonist realizes that the first must be rejected and the second welcomed in order for her to go on living. 

Serafina’s desperate prayer to the statue of the Madonna she keeps—“Oh, Lady, give me a sign!”—is answered in the most  unlikely way: in the arrival on her doorstep of Alvaro Mangiacavallo (a fine Emun Elliott), whose argument with a traveling salesman has left him with torn clothes. 

Agreeing to mend his company jacket, Serafina lends him her late husband’s rose shirt. Glimpsing his finely muscled torso in the sunlight for the first time, she can’t help gasping, “My husband's body, with the head of a clown!”

This scene, as much as any other in the play, revealed Tomei’s frankly physical approach to the role. She fairly staggered back at the sight of Elliott’s torso, creating raucous laughter. She produced the same effect in another scene in which Serafina struggles none too successfully to wiggle out of her girdle.

The conflicts in Williams’ best-known plays are normally battlefields of the mind, but Serafina, a Sicilian earth mother, wages hers in the here and now: with neighbors who regard the widow as disorderly, with a prospective new lover she is trying to understand, and with a teenage daughter who provokes all her overprotective instincts.

Cullman masterfully used contributions from set designer Mark Wendland to create this community swayed as much by sensuality as by swaying coastal breezes. But his best work was drawing such a funny-sad, vibrant performance from Tomei. 

In the process, the actress not only made an implicit argument for allowing future theatergoers to see Serafina more often onstage, but also for her own return—hopefully soon—to Broadway.

Theater Review: Cole Porter’s ‘Kiss Me, Kate,’ From the Roundabout Theatre Co.

All hail Kelli O'Hara. With Bernadette Peters and Donna Murphy now aging out of the leading female roles of Broadway musicals of the Golden Age, she is now the reigning queen of the genre. The best way to appreciate Her Majesty is to catch her Tony-nominated performance in Kiss Me, Kate, the glorious production of Cole Porter’s 1948 musical that finished its run this past weekend at Studio 54.

The Roundabout Theatre Co. had to preserve a delicate balance in this “revisal”: how to mitigate or delete the obvious sexism in that original show without losing the sense of fun that has made it an audience favorite over the years. Some changes might make purists break out in hives (e.g., the late-show number “I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple” has been retitled to “I Am Ashamed That People Are So Simple”).

But for the most point, the changes worked, because the bickering but bewitched pair at the heart of the show—egocentric actor/director/producer Fred Graham and his temperamental star and estranged wife, Lilli Vanessi—gave as good as they get, fully an off-stage match William Shakespeare’s quintessential battle-of-the-sexes couple, Petruchio and Kate from The Taming of the Shrew.

Ms. O’Hara took a while to find her footing as temperamental Lilli, but found her groove midway through Act I, as William Shakespeare’s fictional counterpart to Lilli, Kate of The Taming of the Shrew. In “I Hate Men,” she displays the full extent of her considerable vocal prowess—and a comic ferocity to match.

This production also featured the smooth hand of Scott Ellis, who has directed some of the best musicals of the Roundabout, including Holiday Inn, She Loves Me, and Anything Goes. Even for someone with a great track record, this past season was particularly stellar for him, as he also directed the new Tony-nominated adaptation of Tootsie. One sure touch of his clever hand comes in the scene that sets Kate roaring—when she finds not one, but a whole group of peeping toms hidden in a room, leering at her.

Will Chase, though perfectly serviceable in the double role of strutting Petruchio and egotistical producer Fred Graham, was no match for Brian Stokes Mitchell’s Tony-winning turn in the part. On the other hand, Corbin Bleu, who triumphed in the Roundabout’s well-received Holiday Inn a few years ago, is back to perform similar dance magic as Shakespeare’s Lucentio and Bill Calhoun, the hoofer and gambler who draws the unwelcome attention of the underworld.  And Stephanie Styles shines sweetly, whether as Shakespeare’s Bianca and Porter’s somewhat less innocent Lois Lane/Bianca, in “Always True to You in My Fashion.”

I couldn’t let this opportunity pass behind without expressing my appreciation for the brio exhibited by John Pankow and Tom McGowan in one of the wittiest songs in the Porter catalog, “Brush Up Yer Shakespeare.” It is hard to imagine the mix of iambic pentameter and swinging gangster patois rendered more winningly.

I never saw the 1953 screen adaptation starring Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson in its entirety, so the only point of reference I have for this production is the 1999 revival starring Mitchell and the late, marvelous Marin Mazzie. Despite the fact that Amanda Green was brought in this time to revise the Spewacks’ dialogue, no radical differences exist between the two productions like, say, earlier bouncy versions of Oklahoma and the far darker current one.

Longtime fans of the Roundabout have gotten used to its stagecraft marvels, and this production was no exception. Set designer David Rockwell and his crew conjured up efficiently such varying locales as a hotel, a dressing room, as well as the Padua of Fred’s Bard.

As a Roundabout subscriber, I enjoy their “Celebrity” series of post-performance talk-backs. The series title is a bit exaggerated. (I have seldom seen real celebrity leads come up afterward—indeed, I wonder if their contracts stipulate they’re too big to be obligated to do so!). But from performers who have shown up—along with the Roundabout’s Education Dramaturge, Ted Sod—I have learned a great deal about particular productions and the challenges and exhilaration associated with them, and this talk was very much in that tradition.

For instance, I found out that:

*Bella and Sam Spevack were the husband-and-wife team who wrote the “book”—i.e., a musical’s “libretto” or narrative structure—for Kiss Me, Kate, becoming the first Tony Award winners in this category. Though they based the backstage shenanigans of this musical-within-a-musical on a real theatrical “royal couple,” Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, it also mirrored their own situation: though separated as they began work, working on the show brought them together again. (For more on that original production, see my blog post from 11 years ago.)

*The placement of the musicians differed in this production from most other musicals. Music director Paul Gemignani had definite ideas about where the musicians should play. For instance, by being split in two boxes over the stage, they faced the players without being (literally) looked down on. Second, clarinetist Greg Thymius actually appeared onstage with the company as part of the rousing second-half opener, “Too Darn Hot.”

*Bleu spoke candidly but without self-pity about the physical toll the action can take on players—and what they do to counter this. In his case, it involved ice packs, ibuprofen and eating regularly. The night before this performance, he had tweaked his neck, so he and choreographer Warren Carlyle had to work out what he could and couldn’t do this time. The best thing for him, Bleu noted, was, simply, sleep, with Mondays sacrosanct as rest days, not even involving talking, let alone strenuous moving.

Theater Review: Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Merrily We Roll Along,’ From the Roundabout Theatre Co.

When I heard that Merrily We Roll Along, Stephen Sondheim’s flop-turned-cult favorite, was being trimmed for a production by the Roundabout Theatre Co., I feared for the worst. 

Hadn’t the musical been through enough already, with all its various versions—not just the 1981 Broadway originals, but revivals in LaJolla Playhouse, New York’s York Theater, and in Leicester, England that saw overhauls of the songs and "book"?

I needn’t have worried, though. Sure, there is no longer an overture in the show, nor “The Hills of Tomorrow,” the high-school graduation song that bookended the original production. 

But still intact are the other tunes that Sondheim aficionados like me embraced: “Not a Day Goes By,” “Old Friends,” “Good Thing Going,” “Our Time”—among the finest lyrics and melodies created by the most influential American musical theater figure of the last half century. And other tunes have been added that clarify the motives among the principals, such as “Growing Up” and “He’s Only a Boy.” 

Collaborating with the composer-lyricist himself, the Roundabout’s company-in-residence, The Fiasco Theater, has not so much downsized the material as reimagined it for this production (which closes, after a slightly extended run, this weekend, at the Roundabout’s small-scale Laura Pels Theatre). In addition to changes made in the La Jolla and London productions, it has mined earlier drafts among Sondheim’s archives, even the original 1934 George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart play.

With this troupe, the accent is on minimalism—six actors (with three assuming multiple roles), especially rapid costume changes, and just enough props to suggest changes in geography. (The set by Derek McLane tips its hat to the original production—there’s a sign for the Alvin Theater, where the 1981 show premiered and died.) It’s a tribute to their imagination and verve that they succeed so well this time.

The result is a more cohesive, tighter—even intermission-less—show. For all its warnings about the trappings of success, it’s easier to see than ever—even without conventionally sympathetic leads, even going back in time (like Harold Pinter’s Betrayal) to find out how the trio at the heart of this “got off the track” from each other—that this is a show about friendship, filled with a quality that Sondheim detractors have wrongly accused him of lacking: heart. 

The reversion-in-time device—admittedly dangerous because it risks losing audience sympathy for the characters at the start—pays off, as it did not at the time of the premiere, because Sondheim reprises the same songs under different circumstances, with the lyrics remaining the same but their meaning changing.

Following its well-received version of a later Sondheim musical, Into the Woods, a few years ago, The Fiasco group chose, in Merrily, far riskier fare. But clearly, it saw this work not merely as a labor of love but a common bond with the evolution of its own artistic mission: Like the two men and one woman at the heart of Merrily, the co-artistic directors of Fiasco—Noah Brody, Ben Steinfeld, and Jessie Austrian—have had to balance creative daring with the compromises needed to assure the company’s survival.

To be sure, even this time, not all the critics thought that the production’s creators had a “Good Thing Going,” either. But, though the “book” by George Furth has long been identified as the problem with this musical, after the several attempts at a rewrite, it’s only right to say that those difficulties have been exaggerated. Jokes from the original show that fell flat (e.g., about aging film actresses returning to Broadway to revive their careers, thought way back when as a dig at Elizabeth Taylor) have been excised, and the leads are middle-aged actors going back to their early 20s rather than kids asked to age into their mid-40s.

In this revamped version, Mary Flynn, the female friend with a single novel to her credit, comes in for the most noticeable character reshaping. (Literally so: midway through the proceedings, Jessie Austrian spits out olives and stage liquor while shedding Mary's frowzy costumes, revealing the svelte young woman there before booze and bitterness got the best of her.)

As Franklin Shepard, the talented composer who loses his way, Ben Steinfeld can’t get much beyond the bland compromiser who sacrifices marriage and friendship on the altar of his lust and ambition. But he’s helped by a change in the late stages of the script that makes Frank’s conduct more understandable.

Of the main trio of actors, Manu Narayan needs the least help from script changes in making his character sympathetic. Narayan, who appeared in the Lincoln Center production of My Fair Lady last fall, makes the most of his solo number here, “Franklin Shepard Inc.”—an on-air nervous breakdown in which his Charlie Kringas vents frustration with old buddy Frank for his obsession with business and his increasingly dilatory work habits.

The other, subordinate acting trio also acquits itself well. As Frank’s wronged first wife Beth, Brittany Bradford turns “Not a Day Goes By,” often interpreted as a torch song, into a cry of hurt and fury. Emily Young invests considerable intelligence into her glamorous man-trap Gussie Carmichael. And Paul C. Coffey brings varying measures of Broadway bonhomie and desperation to the role of producer Joe Joseph (a role, incidentally, played in the 1981 show by a very young, pre-Seinfeld Jason Alexander).

The plot of Merrily, involving family connections among the makers of a musical (both of Frank’s wives are involved, at one stage or another, in his shows), is mirrored by the creators of this production. Jessie Austrian, for instance, is married to director Noah Brody, and music director Alexander Gemignani has created the new musical arrangements for the small band, as his father Paul was with a large orchestra for the original show.

The real-life creation of Merrily We Roll Along was filled with abundant passion and pain (all chronicled in the 2016 documentary Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, which I reviewed here.) But the multiple attempts to revive it derive from the even more considerable passion and pain in the music and lyrics themselves. 

Have the Roundabout and Fiasco created a Merrily that won’t change anymore? Probably not. But what does it matter in an age when even shows with what are considered the most solid “books,” such as Oklahoma and My Fair Lady, end up reinterpreted quite differently? More important, a new set of theatergoers will get to hear Sondheim songs that are uncommonly witty, wise and warm.

Theater Review: Sam Shepard’s ‘True West,’ From the Roundabout Theatre Company

Fourteen years ago, I was fortunate enough to see Ethan Hawke in an Off-Broadway revival of David Rabe’s dark Hurly Burly. In the years since, I have only caught him here and there in a few of his film roles.

But a few weeks ago, Hawke showed the fulfillment of the talent he flashed then, this time in another darkly comic tale of desperate men hoping for a Hollywood break: True West. Anyone who’s seen the production from the Roundabout Theatre Company—which closed a week ago—can only hope he will be lured to the stage again.

Hawke was joined onstage by another actor best known for his film roles: Paul Dano, star of Little Miss Sunshine, There Will Be Blood, and Wouldn’t It Be Nice? Under the direction of James Macdonald, the duo extracted just about every measure of hilarity and horror they could find in one of the finest plays by Sam Shepard.                                                                                                                                                          

The actors play brothers Lee and Austin, seemingly as different as one can imagine. Austin, the younger, is holed up in the suburban home 40 miles east of L.A. of his mother, who has vacated the premises for an Alaska vacation. Into this quiet environment barges Lee, a drifter who has not seen his brother in five years but immediately establishes an edgy, even sinister, dynamic with his scruffy appearance; his penchant for petty thievery; his anger at Austin's rejection of their no-account father; and his appropriation of Austin’s car keys on an errand, then taunting that he if he wants them back he’ll need to take them from him.

The parents of Lee and Austin have gone to geographical extremes (Alaska, for Mom; the desert, where their father went). But the brothers, without family stability, find themselves at psychological extremes.

All of this could not have come at a worse time for Austin, who, after diligently plugging away on a screenplay, watches in horror as his drifter brother turns into a first-class grifter, too: pitching a cliché-ridden script idea to producer Saul Klimmer, who has come to visit Austin about his project. The next day, Klimmer, having lost an early-morning golf match to Lee, announces that he will option Lee’s project rather than Austin’s. (Gary Wilmes makes the most of his few minutes onstage as slick, shallow Saul, making patently plain why Shepard came to regard Hollywood as a “sprawling, demented snake.”)

Fraternal enmity is as old as Cain and Abel. But in True West, Shepard took this theme into another dimension: i.e., what would happen if angry Cain and mild-mannered Abel switch roles after intermission, when the change in their fortunes pushes Austin into a bender and Lee into a concentrated burst of energy at the typewriter?

At the Roundabout’s American Airlines Theater, the accent was all on deconstruction. Just as the apartment of the mother of Lee and Austin is deconstructed by the end of the play, so are these two characters. The duality in their natures comes in for unexpected exploration. (For instance, it is funnier to watch Lee trying to be responsible and productive than Austin emulating his brother’s drinking and thievery.) 

In past productions, the mutability of their identities took on a different aspect, as the two lead actors would sometimes alternate roles—most notably in the 2000 Broadway revival starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly. This meant there was little if any age difference between the two. But this time, the Roundabout has kept true to Shepard’s original vision of a 10-year age difference between Lee and Austin. It has shifted the dynamic, in an important way.

Before the play, I knew little of Shepard’s life other than the following: that he won the Pulitzer for his 1978 drama Buried Child; that he was a member of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue; that he had several high-profile roles in films, including The Right Stuff; and that, in one of those movies, Frances, he started a three-decade relationship with Jessica Lange.

But the post-show discussion, together with the play, threw light on a number of themes in the playwright’s work, such as troubled father-son relationships (e.g., Shepard’s relationship with his alcoholic father), the need to maintain ties to the land (raised on a farm, the dramatist bought a ranch once he had enough fame), and Hollywood as a source of frustration to anyone who dreams of a creative outlet.    

The discussion brought out that Hawke knew Shepard well from their film work. (The dramatist was father to Hawke’s Hamlet in the 2000 version of Shakespeare’s drama.) The actor made good use of that knowledge to get under the skin of his character. (For his part, Dano appeared in the discussion not too far off from the initially intense and introspective Austin.)

The Roundabout brought out all the darkly comic and mysterious textures of True West, with all its violence and mayhem lurk in the background, culminating in a fraternal faceoff in the desert. Don’t be fooled by the typewriter (rather than laptop or tablet) on which pages are pounded out; 40 years after its premiere, it remains a quintessential showcase for actors taking on themes as old as the Scriptures: the way that dreams, like pages, are pounded and pulverized, and the burden that sons carry of their father's sins.

Theater Review: Lindsey Ferrentino's ‘Andy and the Orphans,’ From the Roundabout Theatre Co.

The Roundabout Theatre Co. concluded an astonishing run of a new play last week. Even just in terms of the script, playwright Lindsey Ferrentino and director Scott Ellis collaborated on an often funny, more often moving road piece of theater in Amy and the Orphans. 

But they also spotlighted a different kind of non-traditional casting—a female and male actor afflicted with Down Syndrome, taking turns in the same key role—that, one hopes, will bring greater opportunity for this mentally challenged group.

Throughout most of the run at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre, Jamie Brewer ("American Horror Story") played Amy, an adult with Down Syndrome, in Amy and the Orphans. Toward the end of the run, however, understudy Edward Barbanell, during Wednesday and Saturday matinees, took over the role, with the production then titled Andy and the Orphans for these occasions.

It was at one of those Saturday matinees that I saw Barbanell. Brewer must have been very fine indeed in the role, because Barbanell excelled as an emotionally complicated character who would exact every bit of any actor’s skill.

The plot unites bicoastally and mentally separated siblings Jacob (Mark Blum) and Maggie (Debra Monk), brought back to their Long Island for the funeral of their father (which itself had followed closely on the death of their mother). 

Before putting their father to rest, they must break the news to their younger sibling Andy, whom they will transport from his group home, “Caring Communities," for the services. Matters become even more complicated when they are joined by Andy’s pregnant legal guardian, Kathy (Vanessa Aspillaga), with wisecracks about her own situations and with pointed reminders that she is far more in touch with the daily needs of their neglected brother than they are.

Flashbacks also depict the now-deceased parents, Bobby (Josh McDermitt, “The Walking Dead”) and Sarah (Diane Davis), as they weigh what to do about infant Andy. Their decision—to commit him to Willowbrook, a New York school for the mentally disabled—left many area residents of a certain age (including this viewer) in the audience with searing memories of headlines about a now-notorious institution.

Although Blum, Monk, and Aspillaga were frequently amusing, McDermitt and Davis were consistently searing as their husband and wife characters went back and forth on a decision that would not only affect the course of their own relationship but the lives of their children.

Roundabout mainstay Scott Ellis kept the play moving swiftly through its 90 minutes without intermission.

The play’s Amy was based on the playwright’s real-life adult Amy, who had the misfortune to live “when medical professionals told my grandparents they had just given birth to a 'Mongolian idiot' who would never learn to read or write.”

In the post-show “talkback” with the audience, Barbanell related how he made his case for taking on the role by reciting the “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet. Natural preparation, it seems to be, with “To be or not to be” also being about how—even if—to endure a world that seems stacked against you at every turn, as his Andy is in the play.

The Laura Pels Theatre has served as a launching pad over the last several years for several new small-scale, but worthy productions by fledging playwrights, such as Meghan Kennedy’s Napoli, Brooklyn, Anna Ziegler’s The Last Match, Mike Bartlett’s Love, Love, Love. Steven Levenson’s If I Forget, and Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews. Andy (or Amy) and the Orphans expands on that tradition, bringing to the surface a problem from America’s past in its mistreatment of its most vulnerable citizens.