‘The Rose Tattoo’ Broadway Review: Marisa Tomei Goes Big For Tennessee

Imagine you’re invited to some netherworld, Southern Gothic-themed cocktail party peopled with Tennessee Williams heroines. There’s Amanda Wingfield and Blanche DuBois competing for pity with wilted stories of glory days, Maggie the Cat in her slip, stalking waiters, and lusty Maxine walking a leashed iguana and a cabana boy or two. Even among this look-at-me bunch, The Rose Tattoo‘s Serafina Delle Rose would be a spectacle, the brash, loud and vulgar center of attention outtalking everyone else, bragging about her long-dead husband’s bedroom talents, how the two got those colored lights going like even Stanley Kowalski would envy. Now imagine Serafina portrayed by Marisa Tomei in prodigious Cousin Vinny Oscar-getting mode, and you’ll maybe get a sense of director Trip Cullman’s tonally raucous production of The Rose Tattoo, opening on Broadway tonight in a Roundabout Theatre Company presentation at American Airlines Theatre.