Funny lady, serious role

Andrea Martin pauses to straighten her lipstick and tousle her hair in a mirror outside the Huntington Theatre Company rehearsal room. Stepping inside, she slips into a purple sateen robe and talks animatedly about playwrights, political leaders, and how much coffee is on hand for the Saturday-morning rehearsal before curling up in character on a pink velvet couch.

Martin moves languidly in and out of a series of poses, smiling sweetly, scowling with grief, then training a seductive gaze on a camera as she assumes the role of Serafina delle Rose, the exotic flower who blooms at the center of Tennessee Williams's play "The Rose Tattoo."

Known for comic roles that go as far back as "SCTV," right up to her recent turn as the cheerily demented Mrs. Siezmagraff in the Huntington's 2001 production of "Betty's Summer Vacation," she's not the first actress many would think of for a Williams heroine.

Martin says she pondered that fact herself, until she realized that Serafina is a singular figure in an unusual play. Unlike the Williams heroines Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire" or Cathy in "Suddenly, Last Summer," Serafina is stunned -- but not destroyed -- when tragedy strikes. She withers but reblooms in "The Rose Tattoo," a sprawling tragicomedy that has been called the playwright's love poem to the world, and the only Williams play that ends happily. It opens in previews at the Huntington tonight.

Director Nicholas Martin (no relation) who oversaw "Betty's Summer Vacation" and is helming "Rose Tattoo," harbors no concerns about Andrea Martin's first foray into Williams's work. Indeed, he considers her perfect for the part -- and the play as he perceives it.

The smoldering Italian actress Anna Magnani was Williams's inspiration for Serafina, and Magnani immortalized the role when she starred opposite Burt Lancaster in the 1955 film version.

The black-and-white movie was brooding and naturalistic, its emotions serious and dark, says the director. "It translated the story Williams told, without the poetry and heightened theatricality of what he wrote for the stage," Martin contends.

Martin hopes to re-create what he thinks Williams wanted: a Serafina who is "passionate, dramatic -- and funny."

Just like Andrea Martin herself, he says.

Not many people realize just what a range the actress has, her director points out. An Emerson College graduate, Martin launched her life in the theater in a legendary production of "Godspell" in Toronto, where she costarred with Gilda Radner, Victor Garber, and other Toronto-based performers she would work with on "SCTV."

Martin earned a slew of nominations and two Emmy awards in the late 1970s for skits she wrote for "SCTV." She also created such signature characters as the leopard-coated TV station manager Edith Prickley, who snorts at her own jokes.

As "SCTV" wrapped up, Martin won a Tony Award for her Broadway debut in "My Favorite Year." She has worked consistently in "straight" plays, such as "Lips Together/ Teeth Apart," opposite Nathan Lane, and at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where Nicholas Martin directed her in "The Matchmaker" and "The Royal Family."

Movie audiences discovered her in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," though Martin also had small, vivid roles in "Wag the Dog" and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." In addition, she has worked regularly in television for two decades.

Martin researched, wrote, and performed a one-woman show, "Nude, Totally Nude," an autobiographical piece in which she explored her Armenian heritage, her mother's alcoholism, her own experiences as a divorced single mother -- and what it is like to be a middle-age woman who is best known for being funny.

A plum role in Christopher Durang's "Betty's Summer Vacation" brought her to the Huntington stage to work with her close friend and frequent collaborator Nicholas Martin. Before the final curtain went down on the play, the Martins promised to work together again on a piece that would showcase the actress's rich range of talents. But first she went exploring.

To the surprise of her friends and colleagues, she took on the role of Aunt Eller in Trevor Nunn's revival of "Oklahoma!" Months after romping through Durang's hilarious satire, Martin was on Broadway, spinning butter on a prairie.

"I really believed that if I could play that character, who is grounded in the earth and the history of the United States -- not the kind of role I usually play -- it would help me change the perception out there and my own perception of what I can accomplish as a performer," she says. "And that's what it did."

Martin was nominated for a Tony for Aunt Eller. The role, along with her appearance as Aunt Voula in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," significantly raised her public profile. More important, says Martin, her success in "Oklahoma!" expanded her sense of possibility.

She's ready, she says, to move beyond the realm of wise aunts and enter the world of Serafina, one of the most passionate wives, mothers, and lovers in modern American drama.

Set in an enclave of Italian immigrants on an island off the Gulf Coast, "The Rose Tattoo" is dedicated to the playwright's longtime lover, Frank Merlo, an Italian-American who introduced Williams to his ancestral home in Sicily, where the writer fell in love with the place and its people.

Explains Martin: "He transplanted the characters, the sights and sounds -- the music, the folk magic, the passion -- to this island near New Orleans, and he brings it to life in the love story of Serafina."

Serafina is the local seamstress who sews modern fashions for her aspiring neighbors in her home. She lives and works surrounded by talismans of romance, religion, and the proud tradition of the old country, waiting eagerly each day for her handsome husband to return from work and share an evening of very contemporary unbridled passion.

When he dies unexpecedly, she cloisters herself in a cottage with his ashes. Only when her beautiful teenage daughter threatens to leave is Serafina's door thrown open to unwelcome visitors -- including a young man named Alvaro, who reminds Serafina of her husband.

It's a part that calls on a range of experiences and emotions Martin hasn't often shown in one place.

"Andrea possesses a comic genius combined with a real acting ability that you rarely find in someone that funny," her director says. "I think Williams might have used Andrea as a model for Serafina if he had written the play for a later generation."

Maureen Dezell can be reached dezell@globe.com.