Who’s That Hunk Romancing Marisa Tomei?
Performers
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Elliott plays Alvaro Mangiacavallo, a handsome truck driver who catches the eye of Tomei’s Serafina Delle Rose. A Sicilian immigrant and grieving widow who’s locked herself and her teenage daughter away from the world, Serafina is taken aback by her attraction to this younger man, who superficially resembles her late husband but has, as she puts it, “the head of a clown.” Yet The Rose Tattoo doesn’t start out as a romance. The first half is the sad story of a self-destructive woman who won’t let herself move on. Elliott’s Alvaro doesn’t arrive until Act II, so he spends a lot of time backstage, just listening.
“I like to focus in on Marisa — Is she feeling energetic that night? Is she feeling feisty? — so that I can prepare myself for when I walk out there,” Elliott says. “It’s a strange experience; I’ve never just sat there for an hour and a half in the dressing room and then walked on and been met with this energy and boiling rage. The last thing I want to do is let that ball drop.”
He admits he was nervous about working with Tomei, who previously played Serafina at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2016 with a different Alvaro. “It was daunting, the prospect of having to go head-to-head with her,” says Elliott, but his concerns soon dissipated. “She’s been so openhearted and supportive and collaborative,” he says. “And she’s brilliant. I could change the way I do things every night and trust that she’s going to respond to it, and I hope she feels the same about me.”
Elliott will be turning Tomei’s life upside down (or is that right-side up?) onstage until early December, but if it were up to him, he’d do it indefinitely. “My passion for acting began in the theatre, and this is where I learned this craft that has infinite possibilities,” he says. “You get to explore and make mistakes and develop amongst a group of fellow creators — and no one can edit your performance. It’s great to do Star Wars and Game of Thrones in terms of letting people know that I’m here, but my heart lies in the theatre.”
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Regina Robbins is a writer, director, native New Yorker and Jeopardy! champion. She has worked with several NYC-based theatre companies and is currently a Core Company Member with Everyday Inferno Theatre.
Top image: Marisa Tomei and Emun Elliott in The Rose Tattoo. Photos by Joan Marcus.
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Regina Robbins is a writer, director, native New Yorker and Jeopardy! champion. She has worked with several NYC-based theatre companies and is currently a Core Company Member with Everyday Inferno Theatre.