Tennessee Williams’ metaphor-packed fable on the human condition is a much admired and perennially performed American classic.
First presented at Pitlochry last year, to stellar reviews and Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland nominations, Director Elizabeth Newman refreshingly resists the urge for any gimmicks, embracing Williams’ implacable prose of poetic gentility and allowing the tension to flicker slowly and inexorably to its disturbing climax.
In 1947 New Orleans, old traditions and new cultures clash in a changing world where you're either hyped up or heartbroken by the American dream. Following a string of financial losses and personal misfortunes, Blanche Dubois (Kirsty Stuart) visits her younger sister Stella (Nalini Chetty) but conflict with Stella’s brutish husband, Stanley (Mathew Trevannion), creates a claustrophobic domestic space of disintegration.
Emily James sets the action around a spiral staircase, with a rotating platform to change perspectives and add dynamism as time traverses with Blanche unravelling, Stanley seething and Stella at an impasse, despairing.
Jeanine Byrne’s lighting and Pippa Murphy’s music and sound combine and compel the action forward with discordant jazz marking street scenes snatched in streetcars’ headlights, suggesting a frightening world for the unstable to try and find solace.
Newman’s no nonsense, clear vision ensures, for the majority, that this production is wonderfully executed as it masterfully fluctuates between delicacy and force, genteel pretension and common passion, and ultimately, fantasy and reality.
Indulging in Blanche is a fine balance as the ultimate brittle bad girl spiralling, and Stuart’s portrayal, full of nuance and true poignancy, is superb. Trevannion is disconcerting as Stanley, bellowing frustrations and striking out as he's needled and provoked by Blanche’s intelligence and superiority. Their chemistry as natural enemies is palpable throughout with Trevannion’s self-satisfying pragmatist indulging in senseless brutality etched with obscene humor.
Nalini Chetty's Stella is consciously blind to her husband’s brutality, echoing behaviours from the older couple upstairs. Sympathtic to a point, her self-worth is sacrificed and she is wrapped in her desire for her husband, with her submission to him ultimately sealing her and her sister’s fate.
This interpretation only falls short of perfection due to a lull in pace ahead of the interval followed by some scenes that unravel too quickly. Never an easy watch, this is an engrossing portrayal of mental disintegration and changing societies where self delusion makes or breaks you in a forceful production that remains undeniable.
A Streetcar Named Desire is at the Royal Lyceum until Saturday 9 November.
© Lindsay Corr, November 2024