STAGE REVIEW
THE ROSE TATTOO
Play by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Trip Cullman. Presented by Williamstown Theatre Festival at Main Stage, Williamstown. Through July 17. Tickets $40-$68, 413-597-3400, www.wtfestival.org
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
Play by Tennessee Williams. Directed by David Auburn. Presented by Berkshire Theatre Group at Fitzpatrick Main Stage, Stockbridge. Through July 16. Tickets $62, 413-997-4444, www.berkshiretheatregroup.org
For a reminder that creating memorable female protagonists was a specialty of Tennessee Williams, look no further than Stockbridge and Williamstown, where two of the playwright’s most stormy and steel-willed women are pacing the stage, giving voice to their grief, anger, desire, uncertainty, fear, and implacable determination.
Alas, in only one of those productions does all that sound and fury add up to much: Berkshire Theatre Group’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,’’ in which Rebecca Brooksher delivers a scorching performance as Maggie the Cat, trying desperately to rekindle the passion of an alcoholic husband whose self-willed oblivion is so complete that he has renounced not just Maggie but life itself.
In the other staging of a work by Williams, “The Rose Tattoo’’ at Williamstown Theatre Festival, not even the talents of the exemplary Marisa Tomei — portraying the volatile Sicilian-American widow Serafina Delle Rose — are enough to shore up a wobbly play to which time has not been kind.
By the time he completed “The Rose Tattoo,’’ Williams had already won renown for “The Glass Menagerie’’ and “A Streetcar Named Desire,’’ with “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’’ just a few years away on the horizon. The playwright sought to blend the comic, the carnal, and the inherent drama of second chances in “Rose Tattoo,’’ with messy results. Today, the play feels bedeviled by an identity crisis, unsure what it wants to be.
It’s an appealing production to look at, thanks to some smartly atmospheric touches by Williamstown director Trip Cullman and his design team, including a walkway extending from the rear of the audience to the stage on which certain scenes unfold, lending them an up-close-and-personal immediacy. But Williams’s trademark lyricism is only sporadically in evidence — and when it does appear, seems forced.
Serafina is a seamstress in a Louisiana Gulf Coast town in the 1950s who has virtually entombed herself and her teenage daughter, Rosa (Gus Birney), in mourning for Serafina’s late, idealized husband. Serafina cherishes the memory of his sexual magnetism, only to be shattered years later when she learns that he was unfaithful to her. Rosa, meanwhile, is struggling to free herself from her mother’s stifling gloom as her own libido awakens and she pursues a romance with an earnestly upright young sailor, played by Will Pullen.
Into these complicated family dynamics walks a good-hearted truck driver named Alvaro Mangiacavallo, portrayed with zest by Christopher Abbott, bringing needed energy to a production that feels somewhat adrift before his arrival. Alvaro’s physique bears a startling resemblance to that of Serafina’s dead husband. When she meets Alvaro, she exclaims: “My husband’s body, with the head of a clown!’’
The role of Serafina is one that opens the door to histrionics, stereotyping — and splashy prizes for the actress who plays her. Maureen Stapleton won a Tony Award in 1951 for her portrayal of Serafina (Stapleton returned to the role 15 years later in the Broadway revival). Anna Magnani’s scenery-chewing excess in the 1955 film adaptation led to an Academy Award.
By welcome contrast, Tomei, an Oscar winner herself for “My Cousin Vinny,’’ delivers a skillfully multifaceted performance in “The Rose Tattoo.’’ Indeed, the actress is more nimble at navigating the shifts between drama and comedy than the play is.
The central question upon which “The Rose Tattoo’’ pivots is: Will Serafina act upon her attraction to Alvaro, and by so doing return to the land of the living? Williams touches, too, on the destabilizing impact of loss: the devastating blow that is felt when a loved one dies and the world no longer makes sense, and also the very different but still poignant sense of loss a parent feels when a child grows to adulthood.
For all that, though, the stakes never seem all that high in “The Rose Tattoo’’ — certainly not as high as they feel in David Auburn’s engrossing production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’’ at Berkshire Theatre Group.
Brooksher’s Maggie commands the stage from the start, a compound of sensuality, defensiveness, avidity, and guile who is able to swim in the choppy, shark-infested sea that is the Pollitt household. The alcoholic dissipation of her husband, Brick (Michael Raymond-James of “True Blood’’), threatens his claim on the huge inheritance to be left by Brick’s father, plantation owner Big Daddy (a suitably corrosive Jim Beaver). Big Daddy is dying of cancer, which comes as traumatic news to his wife, Big Mama (Linda Gehringer, the best I’ve seen in this challenging role).
Maggie needs to get pregnant, and fast, or Big Daddy might leave the family fortune to Brick’s scheming brother. But Brick wants nothing to do with Maggie, sexually or otherwise, because he blames her for the death of his best friend, Skipper, who was in love with Brick. Unfortunately, Raymond-James carries Brick’s numbed interiority to an extreme, mumbling his lines in a way that often renders them unintelligible.
But an urgency nonetheless pervades this “Cat,’’ especially in those moments when Brooksher’s Maggie confronts her husband as if she can drag him back to life through sheer willpower, crying out at one point: “Skipper is dead! I’m alive! Maggie the Cat is alive!’’ Yes, she is.
THE ROSE TATTOO
Play by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Trip Cullman. Presented by Williamstown Theatre Festival at Main Stage, Williamstown. Through July 17. Tickets $40-$68, 413-597-3400, www.wtfestival.org
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
Play by Tennessee Williams. Directed by David Auburn. Presented by Berkshire Theatre Group at Fitzpatrick Main Stage, Stockbridge. Through July 16. Tickets $62, 413-997-4444, www.berkshiretheatregroup.org
Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com.
