The Rose Tattoo - National Theatre

I am officially on holiday as of tonight so went to see 'The Rose Tattoo' to celebrate. My recent run of plays hasn't been too successful, but (phew!) this bucked the trend in unpleasantness and was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

A play with love, despair, anger and hurt, humour, claustrophobia, shame, love and joy, the range of human emotions. A bit of light and shade, some humanity.

I don't have a very good track record with Tennesee Williams. My claim to fame (and everlasting shame) is falling asleep during the first act of 'The Glass Menagerie' sitting in the front row right in front of a small table on which was laid out a glass menagerie. It was in Toronto a couple of years ago, freezing snow outside, warm and cosy inside and my head nodded ...

Zoe Wanamaker is excellent as Serafina, the main character who's on stage for almost the whole time. It's not a one-woman show by any means but the production probably stands or falls by who plays that part. She's a social climber who starts off dressed to the nines in a colourful frock and gradually descends into a grimy slip as despair and loss affect her before dressing up again for a night of passion and ends up running after her new love in her dressing gown. Not the most physically flattering role for her to play but she did it so well.

It's not the most subtle of plays and you could see where it was heading but I wanted her to open her eyes and find love again in a cruel world. Zoe made me want that rather than the writing, I think, which is a demonstration of her power as an actress. There's a sort of parallel story going on with Serafina's daughter finding first love but that didn't engage me so much.

There was a nice motif of a watch that Serafina buys for her daughter's graduation from school that she keeps failing to give to her. The watch doesn't work while she's still in the rut of loss and still mourning the death of her husband three years earlier and then, once she's found a new love, the watch is working again. But she still fails to give it to her daughter.

It was an interesting production as well, with Serafina's house on a turntable on stage, turning round for every other act, a gaggle of women as neighbours, a gang of children running round at odd moments and, my favourite, a massively horned and shaggy brown goat! O yes. All life is here.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was moved, I had a chuckle, I struggled with the odd Italian-American accents, I admired Zoe in tight-fitting frocks and lose slips, I felt strangely embarrassed for the lover on stage in his boxer shorts, I was outraged when the goat didn't join the cast on stage for applause at the end. And I had a beer at half-time followed by ice-cream. What more could one ask?