At center stage

Though many people identify her as Rose Castorini, audiences will get to know Olympia Dukakis simply as Rose when she comes to the Irvine Barclay Theatre later this month.

The role in “Moonstruck” was surely a significant one, earning her an Academy Award for best supporting actress, but on Jan. 26 and 27, Dukakis will play the character that changed her as an actress, presenting a concert reading of Martin Sherman’s Broadway production “Rose” at the Barclay.

The one-woman show spotlights an old Jewish woman as she reflects on a life that has taken her from a Ukrainian shtetl to the Warsaw ghetto, and finally to a bench in Miami Beach.

“The most extraordinary thing about this piece is the woman herself,” she said. “The resilience she has, her insistence on going forth in the face of all sort of difficulties and tragedies around her is really what the show is about.”

Audiences should expect a show that is humorous — Dukakis promises a few good laughs — and serious . For Rose, a two-time widow, comedy is therapeutic and enables her to process life’s misfortunes and contradictions.

Written by a “very conscientious Jewish man,” the play deals with modern Jewish identity, while remaining universally significant, Dukakis said, adding that the author was careful not to take any particular political stance.

“I don’t think this is just a Jewish thing,” she said. “It’s very much about the human spirit that will not be defeated.”

Although she is younger than the octogenarian she plays in “Rose,” Dukakis, a mother of three, said her own life has helped her to better understand the character. The daughter of Greek immigrants, Dukakis was born in Lowell, Mass., representing the first generation of her family in the United States.

“I understand what she confronts when she comes to the United States,” Dukakis said, “the feeling of being an outsider, and at the same time feeling there is freedom in not fitting in.”

The part of an old, Jewish woman is nothing new for Dukakis, who coincidentally has played several Jewish and Italian mothers throughout her career. She supposes that’s because she transmits an “ethnic energy or feeling.”

Since she opened the production at London’s Royal National Theatre in 1999, she has performed it more than 200 times. In 2000, “Rose” opened at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway, where it played for two months.

Dukakis enjoys the opportunity “Rose” gives her to forge a more intimate connection with the audience, although it’s challenging to play the sole performer in a show.

“I really have a very personal and sometimes profound relationship with the audience,” said Dukakis, who got her “late” theatrical start in a production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s “The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife” at age 27.

After starring in several films, including “Steel Magnolias” and “Look Who’s Talking,” and television shows — she once lent her voice to “The Simpsons” — Dukakis still prefers theater.

“In a theater, the audience becomes a mini community every night,” she said. “That doesn’t necessarily happen in the movies.”