There is one upside to all the theaters being closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through streaming, YouTube, Zoom, and other digital platforms, we get a chance to catch up with intriguing productions we may have missed. One such is the Young Vic’s innovative 2014 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, which was shown in cinemas through HD Live and played a limited engagement at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2016 following an extended run in London. NT Live at Home will play the production for free on YouTube through May 28.
Though Tennessee Williams’s classic clash between the faded Southern belle Blanche DuBois and her brutish brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski has been interpreted numerous times for stage and screen since its 1947 premiere, director Benedict Andrews has found new insights as well as invigorating the essential conflict and message.
In Andrews’s intense and immediate staging, nothing is hidden and nothing is stable. Magda Willi’s deceptively spare, all-white set in a blackbox space has no walls and only a flimsy sheer curtain separates the two rooms in the Kowalskis’ New Orleans tenement. When Gillian Anderson as a battered, neurotic Blanche DuBois arrives and takes her first surreptitious sip of whiskey, the set begins to slowly revolve, mirroring Blanche’s unmoored psyche. She has nowhere to hide and cannot rely on anything.
Willi’s set design and Victoria Behr’s costumes place Tennessee Williams’ immortal drama of clashing values on sexuality and class in the present day. The juxtaposition of 2020 telephones and 1947 sensibilities jar at times. The physical abuse of Stella and upstairs neighbor Eunice at the hands of their spouses—graphically depicted here complete with bloody noses—-would not be so stoically accepted in the era of #MeToo. But the ambiguities of human relations, are as complex today as they were 70 years ago.
Though this staging leans towards Blanche, it doesn’t shortchange Stanley. Many productions make the mistake of portraying Blanche as an innocent, deluded flower crushed by an unfeeling, ape-like Stanley. Fortunately, Ben Foster’s Kowalski is not just an insensitive lout. Covered with obscene tattoos, Foster also conveys Stanley’s insecurities which he masks with macho swagger and violence. Similarly, Anderson’s Blanche is multidimensional. She clearly delineates the fallen lady’s hungry lust and desperate loneliness as well as the deep wound from her past (Blanche’s guilt over her closeted gay husband’s suicide) which caused these neuroses.
Vanessa Kirby beautifully balances Stella’s divided loyalties between her husband and her sister while Corey Johnson conveys the tender anguish of Mitch, Blanche’s simple, sensitive suitor.
