A Streetcar named Desire

Set in the stifling heat of New Orleans French Quarter, this is Tennessee Williams’ most popular work and one of the most successful plays of the 20th century.

Clearly much thought had been given to the setting for this play and exploiting the layout and staging opportunities offered at The Mission.  The set was very detailed, with the audience on three sides and two rooms set out; one as the main living room and another as the bedroom.  However, the rooms could have been more clearly defined which might have prevented the actors using the wrong space by mistake on occasion.

The scene changes were long and distracting and rather upset the atmosphere the actors had been working hard to create. There were a large number of crew who came on and sometimes moved just one or two items that could easily have been reset by the cast before or even after the lights went up.   This had the effect of making this a very long production. That is not to say that the crew did not do their job efficiently, but keeping things simple and using the cast as much as possible would have been more effective.

One aspect of the play is the intense heat of New Orleans, where every character is hot and sweaty and, as the temperature soars, so do their passions and conflicts. Unfortunately, the lighting was very dark and as a consequence there was little sense of the heat.  However, the strength in this production was the acting.

Blanche Dubois is a complex character with a huge amount of dialogue, which the actor handled with confidence and conviction, although very occasionally the Southern drawl was difficult to understand.   She portrayed the fading southern belle at the start of the play particularly well and really got the desperation and loneliness of the character.

Stella Kowalski was excellent.  Her accent was spot on and she gave a very believable performance as an abused wife driven by her lust for her husband to forgive him anything.

Likewise the ‘brute’ Stanley Kowalski gave a superb performance. Through every scene we could see the inner dialogue taking place in his head and how he is always on the brink of lashing out. The assault and rape scenes were handled well and his brooding presence in the play was a lovely contrast to the flighty Blanche.

Harold Mitchell has the rather thankless task of being a suitor for Blanche, but the actor handled the part well. The other characters were all believable, with some fine performances.

The costumes were excellent with nice attention to detail and just right for the period.

There was much to like in this production, with some excellent acting but I felt a more simplistic approach would have enhanced the text rather than distracting from it.

 

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