Whenever I start a new play with my students, I always tell them to envision it in their heads – think about the staging, the dramatic effects, the props, the costuming, the list goes on. Theater is such a visual medium, yet the best we can do is read it, hoping that there’s a filmed version somewhere, or showing them a film adaptation if that’s the closest thing. When I was teaching A Streetcar Named Desire from 2016 to 2017, the closest thing I had was the Marlon Brando film, and since most of the cast had played their roles on Broadway, I felt that this would suffice.
However, Brando’s performance overwhelmed everyone else’s, and instead of the play being about main character Blanche DuBois, it became more of the Stanley Kowalski show. The 1951 film was also in black and white, so Tennessee Williams’ use of colour symbolism wasn’t as significant anymore. I didn’t know how much I was missing until I saw National Theatre’s version of the play, which is certainly more contemporary in style, with guitar riffs used as musical transitions, and the actors in costumes more reflective of modern day touches. But the greatest shift is that the DuBois sisters and their relationship becomes more central, and Blanche is the tragic figure she is meant to be.
Vanessa Kirby is brilliant as Stella, giving so much depth to a character that usually gets swept to the peripheries as the conflict between Stanley and Blanche takes centrestage. She is fiercely protective of her sister, and even when Stanley asks her to leave the house so he can have a word with Blanche, because of the set we can see her still lingering outside, listening in, and interrupting when things get heated. We truly sense how torn she is, trying to make peace between her husband and sister, yet being unable to alleviate the tension that exists between the two. When Stanley tells her the news of Blanche’s promiscuity, she refuses to believe him, choosing to defend Blanche and speaks about Blanche’s blindness about her husband Allan Grey with such empathy and understanding.
When Blanche is being taken away to be committed, Kirby’s Stella wails with such pain that we almost forget that she chooses to stay in denial about her husband’s action of raping her sister, aligning herself with Stanley and the family they have together. It’s hard to ignore the symbolism of both Blanche and the baby clothed in blue items, with one replacing the other. Through Kirby’s performance, I saw the difficulty Stella faced in making such a choice, developing her into a more sympathetic than pragmatic figure.
Gillian Anderson delivers a powerhouse performance as Blanche. For all of Blanche’s experience with the world, she is still quite naive and innocent in some ways, especially when it comes to love. She has never been able to let go of her young husband’s memory, the beauty of it mixed in with the pain. When Anderson’s Blanche goes to kiss the paper boy, the audience laughs because of the boy’s reaction, but what is so apparent in that moment is Blanche’s desperation, the desperation to forget all her loss, drowning herself blindly in desire as a way to keep all the pain at bay.
Anderson constantly reminds you of Blanche’s pain, the pain she tries to hide with copious amounts of alcohol and constant bathing, the insecurity she feels about her age and fading looks, turning tricks with Mitch because of society’s definition of what a woman has to be. She lies about her age, tells him she has traditional ideas, and of course this all goes to pieces when he finds out the truth from Stanley. While it may seem that it is the lies that Mitch finds contention with, he also utters that she isn’t clean enough to bring into the house where he and his mother lives. Even Stanley, who isn’t exactly on the straight and narrow, judges Blanche for her promiscuous behaviour.
Ben Foster’s Stanley Kowalski is different from Brando’s portrayal, which adds a slightly different layer to the play. Brando’s Stanley may not be as educated as Blanche is, and he’s uncertainly unrefined, but we never get the sense that he is dim. Foster’s Stanley isn’t as bright, a little bit more sympathetic and vulnerable. When he walks in on Blanche calling him a brute to Stella, he looks hurt to hear the names she calls him and the antagonism he starts to feel towards her seems to be from Blanche’s marring of his relationship with Stella. He also seems to lament having told Mitch about Blanche’s past after Stella tells him about what happened between Blanche and Allan.
These changes to the character, while intriguing to watch, do make Stanley’s rape of Blanche towards the end a little harder to understand. In the play, the power tussle is apparent from the start, with the two seeking dominance over the other, and Stanley’s objectification and sexual classification of women also coming into the picture (this is how he is described by Williams in his opening stage directions). Thus, his rape of her is a show of power, with his donning of his red pyjamas adding a symbolic touch, alluding to the destructive ends of desire. In Foster’s portrayal, we see how Stanley isn’t a bad man. He is clearly in love with his wife and seems to want to the right thing, but ends up giving in to his demons.
A Streetcar Named Desire has always been accused of melodrama, especially when we think about how much Brando’s ‘Stellaaaaa!’ scream has been parodied. The original performances are fun to watch, but they are so over-the-top that I could never relate to any of the characters. National Theatre’s tones it down, fleshing out the vulnerabilities of these characters, their demons and insecurities laid bare on stage for us to scrutinize. This is emphasized through the cast doing scene transitions in the open, where everything is done in front of the audience, be it the clean-up or the undressing.
Stella couldn’t admit to herself the flaws in the man she married, Stanley struggles with the inferiority of his working class roots, Mitch has to contend with societal standards of what it means to be a man (he is made fun of for taking care of his mother) and Blanche, well, Blanche is forced to see that love isn’t the stuff of poetry, the magic of it all stripped before her eyes. She is unable to overcome her trauma, and in trying to find some sense of respite, she experiences the loss of agency over her body and mind. A Streetcar Named Desire is a startling reminder of our human frailties, that real life isn’t full of magic, as much as desire it to be so.
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