I read Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass 
Menagerie” in 10th grade English class. Ever 
since then, I’ve been a fan of his work. In 
particular, I love his concept of a “memory play,” 
the idea of a play taking place entirely in the 
mind of a character and thus being warped by 
the distortions, diminutions and exaggerations 
we all experience in our memories. Williams 
himself states at the beginning of the play that 
“the scene is memory and is therefore non-
realistic … It omits some details; others are 
exaggerated, according to the emotional value 
of the articles it touches, for memory is seated 
predominantly in the heart.”
“The Glass Menagerie” takes place in the 
mind of the main character, Tom, as he tries 
to find a suitor for his introverted sister, 
Laura, at the urging of his mother, Amanda. 
Tom eventually 
invites 
his 
friend, Jim, to 
come to their 
home to meet 
Laura. After Jim 
meets 
Laura, 
he claims that 
he 
is 
already 
engaged. 
Amanda 
angrily blames 
Tom 
for 
not 
having already 
known this. In 
the end, Tom 
leaves his sister 
and 
mother, 
determined 
to 
never 
return. 
As his memories 
of the two of 
them end, Tom 
says 
goodbye 
to his mother 
and sister and 
asks his sister 
to blow out the 
candle on the 
memory play.
Given 
how 
essential 
the 
memory-
induced distortion of narrative is to this 
play, I’ve always assumed this concept would 
carry through Williams’s other works. I’d 
assumed this, along with many other staples 
of Modernist theater, would carry through any 
Williams play being performed today.
So this past weekend, when I had the 
privilege of seeing the Roundabout Theatre’s 
new production of Tenessee Williams’s “The 
Rose Tattoo,” I assumed I would see the same 
narrative-distorting concepts come into play. 
Williams wrote “The Rose Tattoo” in 1951, 
after all, shortly after the success of “The 
Glass Menagerie” in 1944. How could he not be 
influenced by the ground-breaking success of 
this memory play concept while he worked on 
“The Rose Tattoo”?
But to my great surprise, “The Rose Tattoo” 
is a simple, if quirky, romantic comedy. It 
follows main character Serafina Delle Rosa as 
her husband passes away, her daughter grows 
up, and she learns to love again. It’s almost a 
dark comedy: Right when Serafina is ready to 
love again, she meets a man with the body of 
her husband but the head of “a clown.” As she 
grows to love him, the audience cannot help 
but note his many faults. 
My 
predisposition 
towards 
unreliable 
narrative in this play proved to be entirely 
unfounded. If anything, the narrator/point 
of view of this play is so loosely defined as 
to be entirely negligible. But because of my 
experience with “The Glass Menagerie,” I 
found myself assuming throughout the show 
that the narrative I was witnessing was not 
accurate. At one point, as Serafina’s daughter 
cuts her wrist right before she goes on a date 
with her new love, I all but assumed that 
she was about to pass away — that Serafina’s 
love for her daughter had blinded her (as 
the narrator of the play) to the reality of her 

daughter’s feelings.
As the play began to conclude, I couldn’t 
help but allow the tragic ending of “The Glass 
Menagerie” to keep me constantly on edge — 
just as Tom’s relationships to his family fall 
apart, I all but assumed that Serafina’s would 
fall apart as well. Serafina’s withdrawal from 
the world, after all, is eerily similar to both 
Laura and Amanda’s withdrawal. I couldn’t 
see how this play could end with such a simple, 
happy conclusion given the incredibly somber 
ending of “The Glass Menagerie.”
Oddly enough, this wasn’t the first time 
that my knowledge of an artist tainted my 
perception of their work. As a young composer 
back in high school, I’d been obsessed with 
Beethoven’s 
“Große 
Fuge,” 
his 
thorny, 
dissonant, (seemingly) über-avant-garde late 
work. For those unfamiliar with the piece, it’s a 
blistering 15-minute trek through Schoenberg-
esque atonality and rhythmic, harmonic and 
melodic dissonances.
As 
a 
high 
school 
composer, 
and as I began 
branching 
out 
to 
other 
Beethoven 
string quartets, 
I 
remember 
being constantly 
affected 
by 
the 
rhythmic 
and 
harmonic 
dissonances 
that I’d learned 
to expect in the 
“Große 
Fuge” 
— 
I’d 
study 
early Beethoven 
works that were 
quite dissonant 
for the classical 
era 
he 
lived 
in at the time, 
but 
would 
barely 
notice 
the 
structural 
dissonances. 
I’d 
been 
preconditioned, 
almost, 
to 
expect 
all 
of 
Beethoven’s 
music to reach the height of his quasi-Serialist 
masterpiece, and I was unphased by anything 
less dissonant.
While Beethoven’s incredible artistic output 
allows for many separate interpretations 
and listening mindsets — notice that my 
obsession with the “Große Fuge” merely 
tainted my perception of his string quartets, 
not his greater catalogue of compositions — 
Williams’s comparably slim output leaves little 
room for this. “The Rose Tattoo” is a perfectly 
good play, after all, but given Williams’s other 
famous plays, it’s frequently neglected. 
Perhaps minor, less successful artists are 
frequently affected by the fame and success 
of their magnum opuses. Perhaps the “one hit 
wonder” concept in popular music transfers to 
other genres of the performing arts.
Almost as soon as I posited this, I saw the 
inherent flaws. Unlike popular music, which 
has only recently become a topic of historical 
study, other performing artforms have years 
of scholarly study preventing this hierarchical 
abandonment from taking place — I wouldn’t 
be surprised if a scholar or two have founded 
their entire careers on the study of Williams’s 
entire catalogue, from “The Glass Menagerie” 
to “The Rose Tattoo.”
What I have learned, however, is that it can 
sometimes be just as interesting to study an 
artist’s minor works as it is to study their major 
works. In the case of Williams, for example, 
I learned far more from the discrepancies 
between this work and his other more 
popular works than I did from any of these 
successful works themselves. Perhaps our 
interests should lie not in an artist’s success 
but in their other attempts at reaching such 
success. Perhaps it is not the masterpiece but 
the almost-masterpiece, the near-masterpiece, 
that is most deserving of our critical thought.

The almost-masterpiece
that is ‘The Rose Tattoo’

SAMMY SUSSMAN
Daily Community Culture Columnist

HBO

In the third episode of the second season of HBO’s 
hit suburban drama “Big Little Lies,” a second grade 
teacher is shown giving facts to his students about 
climate change. “How many gallons of water does it 
take to make a single sausage?” he asks. His obedient 
congregation responds: “A thousand.” “That’s right,” 
he continues, “and how many showers does that 
add up to?” Again, the children respond: “Fifty.” 
Following this chorus, a young girl is shown fainting, 
her frilled shoes flying up into the air. 
For those who watch the show, you will recognize 
this as the moment Amabella (Ivy George, “Girl 
Meets World”), the daughter of the vivacious, 
headstrong Renata (Laura Dern, “F is for Family”) 
passes out from a panic attack — a panic attack 
induced by her teacher’s lessons on climate change. 
Renata, of course, is never one to take things lightly, 
and goes strutting down to the principal’s office with 
an aura of royalty only a blazer-clad Laura Dern can 
convey. After unloading on the forlorn principal, she 
leaves us with pure poetry: “I will be rich again. I 
will rise up. I will buy a … polar bear for every kid in 
this school. Then I’ll squish you like the bug you are.” 
Besides this being an excellent representation of the 
wealthy’s response to the threat of climate change, 
this scene also opened up discussion for a topic that is 
becoming more and more relevant: climate anxiety.
As the peril to our world at the hands of our 
changing climate increases and our government 
officials look the other way, anxiety about the end 
of the world is rampant. It’s gotten so bad that the 
American Psychological Association released a 
69-page guide for mental health care providers on 
how to help patients cope with “eco-anxiety.” There 
are support networks dedicated to helping people 
deal with their climate anxiety, and many people 
have sworn off having children due to concern for 
how life will be for coming generations. 

And why shouldn’t people be worried? Every day 
the new headlines pop up: “Air pollution is linked to 
miscarriages,” “250,000 deaths from climate change 
is a ‘conservative estimate,’” “Trump Administration 
weakens Endangered Species Act.” The future of our 
world is getting bleaker and bleaker, and anxiety isn’t 
just coming from this fact. The changing climate is 
leading to wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes and 
other repeated natural disasters that threaten the 
lives and stability of people across the globe. If the 
afflicted individuals weren’t already suffering from 
some sort of climate-induced anxiety, the trauma 
and loss they endure as a result of climate change 
may lead to PTSD, depression and anxiety about an 
impending natural disaster. 
Yeah, this is all really depressing. If I was a 
second grader learning about this I probably would 
have fainted, too. Because truly, what can we do? 
Speaking as someone who struggles with anxiety, 
I understand that this distress stems from a lack of 
control. The climate is changing — and? Even with 
all of the recycling, veganism and plastic bans in 
the world, nothing will truly be done about climate 
change until the government and corporations 
change the way they fundamentally run. We have 
less than 50 years until our world is sure to become 
inhabitable, and our elected officials are spending 
their time making fun of a 16-year-old girl doing her 
best to save the planet. 
The sad truth about climate change is that it’s here 
and it’s getting worse. No matter how many painted 
signs or sustainable t-shirts you wear, nothing will 
stop it except systemic change. Not even Laura Dern, 
with all of her power, might and enormous wealth 
can stop it. The only thing we can do is take all of 
the anger and anxiety and channel it into something 
productive. Call your representatives, show up to 
the polls, boycott polluting companies, try to cut 
down on meat consumption, stop buying single-use 
plastics. If the older generations won’t care for a 
world they won’t be around for, shut them down and 
vote them out. And in 20 or 30 years — polar bears 
for everyone. 

Nervous about the end?

SAMANTHA DELLA FERA
Senior Arts Editor

B-SIDE: TV NOTEBOOK

FACEBOOK

COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMN

Will God forgive us? It’s a question that’s asked 
time and time again throughout Paul Schrader’s film 
“First Reformed.” It’s a question I find myself asking 
whenever I read yet another headline announcing the 
death of a species, the melting of a glacier or the failure 
of another climate agreement. Like most humans, 
especially young humans with (hopefully) many 
more years on this planet, I am afraid for my future. 
I am afraid of rising temperatures and everything 
they are expected to bring with them: crop failures, 
climate refugees, more extreme weather, more pain, 
more suffering. My fear grows stronger every day, and 
I still don’t quite know how to deal with it. 
The characters in “First Reformed” are afraid, too. 
The entire film is drenched in a despair that many of 
us feel to the core — guilt about what we have done, 
anxiety about what is going to happen next. Two 
men in particular feel it most acutely: Ethan Hawke 
(“Before Midnight”) as Reverend Toller, a well-
meaning but tormented pastor and Philip Ettinger 
(“Indignation”) as Michael, a soon-to-be father 
obsessed with the coming end of the world. 
Toller lets his despair about both climate change 
and the death of his son eat him alive, partaking in 
binge drinking he knows might just kill him. He is 
a dying man on a dying planet and he hardly cares 
enough to save himself. Michael, though physically 
healthy compared to Toller, is grieved by the new life 
carried by his wife Mary (Amanda Seyfried, “Mamma 
Mia!”). At one point he asks Toller, “But how can you 
sanction bringing a girl … a child full of hope and 
naive belief into a world … when that little girl grows 
to be a young woman and looks you in the eyes and 
says, ‘You knew all along, didn’t you?’”
Both Toller and Michael are overwhelmed by this 
despair — it’s so easy to let it overwhelm you. In the 

face of the megacorporations and billionaires who 
run our world, it’s natural to feel small, to feel helpless 
in saving the earth. The power of these feelings is 
only amplified when we convince ourselves that these 
feelings are ours alone, something we must confront 
on our own.
For most of “First Reformed,” characters appear 
detached from each other, physically and emotionally 
tethered to their own bodies. A profound sense 
of loneliness pervades the film’s cold, biting New 
England winter. But there are brief, striking moments 
of intimacy too, and this intimacy is precisely 
what brings characters out of their despair. Every 
interaction between Toller and Mary is electric, and 
just a touch of their hands inspires a transcendent, 
psychedelic dream sequence. In this sequence, we see 
the two soaring over beautiful natural landscapes. 
This scenery, though, is soon swapped out for images 
showing heaps upon heaps of trash, air-polluting 
factories and other man-made ecological nightmares. 
Once these images come to the forefront, Toller and 
Mary are removed from the picture entirely. Their 
love and their connection simply cannot exist in that 
world. We cannot exist in that world, at least not for 
much longer.
Maybe saving the planet in order to save our lives 
and the lives of the people we love is selfish. After all, 
we alone are responsible for climate change and we 
alone are obligated to fix it; we should feel compelled 
to do whatever we can to reverse the course the planet 
is heading toward out of sheer humanity and decency. 
But if selfishness is the thing that can ultimately save 
us from ourselves, I can’t imagine a better, more 
worthy motivator than love. 
Climate change is real and it’s happening right 
now. More than 97 percent of scientists agree. And 
we’re running out of time before our descendants no 
longer have a healthy and habitable earth to live and 
love on. And that — love — matters. Of course it does. 
It matters more than anything.

Saved by ‘First Reformed’

ELISE GODFRYD
Daily Arts Writer

B-SIDE: FILM NOTEBOOK

YOUTUBE / A24

I couldn’t see how this 
play could end with 
such a simple, happy 
conclusion given the 
incredibly somber 
ending of “The Glass 
Menagerie.”

4B —Thursday, October 17, 2019
b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

