About the Play:

Winner of the 1951 Tony Award for Best Play

The Rose Tattoo is a full-length drama by Tennessee Williams. Set among a colony of Sicilian fisherfolk on the American Gulf Coast, The Rose Tattoo is the story of a woman for whom love was stronger than death. One of the author's most beautiful and powerful plays.

The Rose Tattoo is larger than life – a fable, a Greek tragedy, a comedy, a melodrama – it is a love letter from Tennessee Williams to anyone who has ever been in love or ever will be. Professional widow and dressmaker Serafina delle Rosa has withdrawn from the world, locking away her heart and her sixteen-year-old daughter Rosa. Then one day a fiery suitor with the sexy body of her late Sicilian husband and the face of a village idiot, Mangiacavallo (Italian for "eat a horse"), stumbles into her life and clumsily unlocks Serafina's fiery anger, sense of betrayal, pride, wit, passion, and eventually her capacious love. Tennessee Williams' lesser-known gem sizzles with humour and heart in sultry New Orleans. Serafina erupts from the depths of despair to the heights of passion in this Tony Award-winning Best Play.

The Rose Tattoo premiered in 1951 at the Martin Beck Theatre (now known as the Al Hirschfeld Theatre) and won Tony Awards for best play and for the stars, Eli Wallach and Maureen Stapleton. It spawned three Broadway revivals, a successful 1955 film adaptation, and has enjoyed enduring international popularity.

Cast: 14 women, 9 men

About the Playwright:

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), one of the 20th century's most superb writers, was also one of its most successful and prolific. He was born in Columbus, Mississippi, where his grandfather was the Episcopal clergyman. When his father, a travelling salesman, moved with his family to St. Louis some years later, both he and his sister found it impossible to settle down to city life. He entered college during the Depression and left after a couple of years to take a clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there for two years, spending the evening writing. He entered the University of Iowa in 1938 and completed his course, at the same time holding a large number of part-time jobs of great diversity. He was awarded four Drama Critic Circle Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.