Lab Theatre to host Tennessee Williams play this weekend
Love. Religion. Violence. Melodrama. Magic. You get it all in USC’s production of Tennessee Williams’s “The Rose Tattoo,” playing at the Lab Theatre through Sunday.
The play may not be as well-known as Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” or “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” but it earned the playwright a Tony Award for best play in 1951, was adapted into a film starring Burt Lancaster and Anna Magnani, and tugs at the audience’s heart strings just as hard as his more frequently performed works.
USC’s adaptation, directed by fourth-year theater student Rocco Thompson, is a faithful interpretation of Williams’s text with a cinematic twist: Thompson drew inspiration from the films of famed Italian director Federico Fellini to bring his vision to the stage.
“The Rose Tattoo,” set in the late 1950s in a Sicilian community in Louisiana, follows the story of Italian seamstress Serafina Delle Rose (played by fourth-year theater student Danielle Peterson) as she struggles with the death of her husband by retreating from society. The widow remains in her house for more than three years after the untimely murder of her husband, who sold bananas and did under-the-table jobs for a gang. Serafina wishes her daughter Rosa (played by fourth-year theater and
Spanish student Emily Gonzalez) to become a recluse as well, hiding her clothes to keep her from going to school and from seeing her new beau, a sailor named Jack (played by third-year theater student Liam MacDougall) who she meets at a school dance.
New hope comes for Serafina when Alvaro Mangiacavallo (played by fourth-year theater student William Vaughan) comes into her life, a man with the body of her husband but “the face of a clown.” While Alvaro is the grandson of the village idiot (the character tells Serafina that his comical last name means “eat the horse”), he has a kind heart and may be what the widow needs to turn her life around.
Both Peterson and Gonzalez give convincing performances as their characters undergo huge changes throughout the play. Serafina turns from passionate and full of life to depressed and stir-crazy while Rosa grows from an innocent young girl to a wild teenager. Vaughan and MacDougall are charming and provide comic relief in a mostly serious show. The supporting cast takes on multiple roles and have good chemistry with each other.
The drama is peppered with instances of magic and mystery. A demonic goat and a witchy woman referred to as the “Strega” make multiple appearances throughout the show, evoking fear in Serafina and Rosa. The titular tattoo has mystical qualities, too, appearing where the audience may least expect it to.
There’s a good bit of Italian dialogue mixed into the script and while there are no supertitles, you don’t need to be fluent in the language to figure out what’s going on.
The costumes, designed by graduate student Sean Smith, look authentic to the time period and the red and black worn by Serafina seems to suit her constant changes in behavior.
The set is simple but fitting for the show. The humble parlor is outfitted with several floating shelves which house books, religious relics, old photographs and the ashes of Serafina’s dead husband. The hand-painted “sewing” sign posted outside the house is straight to the point and the antique sewing machine and small statue of the Virgin Mary are effective, realistic props. While the Lab Theater has seating on three sides, the staging is creative so that the action is not lost at any angle.
Tickets for “The Rose Tattoo” are $5 and available only at the door. All shows begin at 8 p.m. Arriving early is suggested because seating is limited.