Academy Award® winner Marisa Tomei unleashed a tour de force as a widow who rekindles her desire for love, lust and life in the arms of a smoldering suitor. Erupting from the depths of despair to the heights of passion, Tomei was "an exquisite, transfixing joy” (Daily Beast) in this “paean to the power of sexual attraction” (The New York Times).

Score

“The role of the music in Rose Tattoo is to bring the rich cultural and spiritual past of these Sicilian immigrants to life. My approach with the song settings was resonant with my particular love of the playing of Jose Gonzales.

The accompaniments were actually quite contemporary in their approach, though this is not something that anyone but an expert in the original style would perceive.

In truth, the integration of the underscore, sound design, transition music and more heightened metaphoric music required a dilution of the traditional style of playing, which has a strong sense of period and cultural style, into something more fluid, flowing, harmonically ambiguous and textural, something much more classical in flow and feel.”

—Fitz Patton on the music as told to Playbill.com

Costumes

“The costume design for The Rose Tattoo is based on this idea of otherness. It is centered around this immigrant woman who, through tragic loss, is navigating her way through the impending tidal wave of uncertainty. Historically, we are in the early ’50s, by the sea in Louisiana. Emotionally, we are in Serafina’s heart and mind as she bumps against the box that society has placed her in.

The characters that Williams parades in and out of Serafina’s house are very diverse, and their costumes reflect that range. The clothes are rooted in reality, but absurdity seeps in when we factor in faith, desire, and sometimes, madness.

A large part of what is exciting for me is a central character who makes clothes. Exploring how Serafina appears and how she dresses herself versus the appearance of the characters for whom she makes clothes is how we create tension in the design. Also, because Serafina is, in essence, an outsider—I needed to make sure that we perceive her as a believable human being. Her clothes must render her in a real manner and sometimes that means choosing the simpler options that the period offers. Modulating her appearance so we don’t lose her otherness but also bridging her to the audience’s realm of understanding is of utmost importance.

Ultimately, The Rose Tattoo is about humanity, acceptance, and love—and the lengths we go to to deny ourselves those. It is about the theatre of appearance and what we look like when we unmask ourselves.”

—Clint Ramos, Costume Design

The Rose Tattoo by Tennessee Williams, directed by Trip Cullman, with Marisa Tomei premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Mandy Greenfield, Artistic Director, in June 2016.

Presented by special arrangement with The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.

Partial underwriting support for The Rose Tattoo generously provided by Ravenel Curry.

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