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Reviewed by:
  • A Streetcar Named Desire
  • Rebecca Gavrila
A Streetcar Named Desire. By Tennessee Williams. Directed by Liv Ullmann. Sydney Theatre Company, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington D.C. 6 November 2009.

In her director's notes for this new, international production of a classic American play, Liv Ullmann wrote: "The way I see it, Tennessee Williams wished to pull us out of our own angry darkness, by allowing us to see, to recognize the hurt and the vulner-ability and the fear disguised as violence or rudeness or carelessness or what may look like madness." The Sydney Theatre Company's production of A Streetcar Named Desire was a dynamic realization of this interpretation of Williams's play. This production of Streetcar was both an intimate character study of four fragile individuals as well as a portrait of one woman's break with reality.

Under Ullmann's direction the actors embodying Blanche, Stanley, Stella, and Mitch exuded volatility, tension, and the erotic potential of hot, booze-soaked New Orleans. The intensity of these four central actors and Ullmann's directing choices were the greatest strengths of this production.

Blanche Dubois's interactions with Stanley, Stella, and Mitch are the catalyst for the events in A Streetcar Named Desire, and in Cate Blanchett's interpretation, Blanche was simultaneously sensuous, pathetic, desperate, and manipulatively flirtatious. In addition to capturing Blanche's fragility, Blanchett made a bold choice, which could have backfired in less capable hands, portraying Blanche as sexually aware and aggressive throughout the production. This element of her performance was integral to the production and probably reflected Ullmann's understanding of the dynamics of the relationship between Blanche and Stanley.

Infused with sexuality, danger, and humor, Joel Edgerton's Stanley was captivating. Instead of playing Stanley as annoyed by Blanche, his approach was much crueler. In their scenes together he toyed with her, amusing himself and provoking her. If Blanche is the flittering moth seeking colored lights, then Stanley is the boy who slowly tears at her wings and enjoys the fact that the moth cannot seem to stay away from him. The sexual tension between Edgerton and Blanchett was palpable and the sense of dangerous flirtation onstage was only heightened by the sensual energy that Edgerton shared with Robin McLeavey's Stella.

Stella could have been reduced to a thankless role, a girl in contrast to Blanche's woman, but McLeavy's performance served as an anchor in the midst of the onstage tempest. Her Stella had infinite patience and youthful exuberance in scenes with Blanchett and Edgerton, but Ullmann also drew out Stella's vulnerability. McLeavey's performance is imbued with sadness. Blanche not only serves as a reminder of the life she left behind when she married beneath her station but also provokes her husband's volatile nature, a nature that she must constantly subdue and defend. In his scenes with Blanchett, Tim Richards's Mitch was both emotionally and sexually desperate—so much so that the audience had to laugh as he practically vibrated with repressed desire while Blanchett coyly vacillated between seductress and coquette. There was, however, a dangerous quality to Richards's performance that remained internalized until his final scene with Blanchett, when he unleashed a brutality equal to Edgerton's Stanley.

The sexual tension and animosity between Blanchett and Edgerton ignited in the so-called "rape" scene—and here Ullmann made a bold directing choice. Rather than staging this encounter as a violent violation, she interpreted the events as inevitable: Blanchett's Blanche was not overpowered, but gave in to Edgerton's forceful Stanley. Although Ullman preserved the element of danger inherent in the scene, in her version, Blanche finally gave in to her baser instincts—the instincts she tried desperately to conceal from Mitch—and used Stanley to find oblivion. Ullmann realizes her interpretation of this important scene by offering a brief, wordless interlude between this scene and the play's denouement. After the fade to black, the lights briefly came up, revealing Edgerton and Blanchett in shadow, in the aftermath of their sexual encounter. Edgerton reclines on the disheveled bed, while Blanchett, nude, sits with her back to...

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