When you take your seat for Rebecca Frecknall’s fresh-from-London, Olivier Award–winning A Streetcar Named Desire at the Harvey Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), you might be disheartened when you see the set—or, rather, the absence of a set. There are no “white frame” or “weathered gray” houses, “with rickety outside stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables,” to quote Tennessee Williams’ famously detailed stage directions. A single central raised square platform doesn’t exactly exude the “raffish charm” of New Orleans’ Elysian Fields.
But fret not: You’ll have no trouble envisioning the cramped two-room flat where Stella (Anjana Vasan) and Stanley (Paul Mescal) live and love, the modest sanctuary that Stella’s sister, Blanche (Patsy Ferran), criticizes from the moment she arrives uninvited and unannounced. And it’s certainly no accident that the playing area bears a strong resemblance to a boxing ring. Soon enough, the brutish Stanley and the highfalutin Blanche will be eyeballing and circling each other like a pair of prizefighters.
Many theatergoers are likely there for Mescal, judging by the audible collective intake of breath when he removes his sweaty bowling shirt. The actor earned bona fide heartthrob status opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones in the 2020 small-screen adaptation of Sally Rooney’s wrenching love story, Normal People, and netted an Oscar nom for his turn as a mentally unstable dad in the memory movie Aftersun; most recently, he took up a sword and shield alongside Denzel Washington in the blockbuster sequel Gladiator 2. Mescal is ideally cast as the casually cruel, boorish Stanley. His “Stell-lahhhhh!” feels like it comes straight from his gut. At one point, he even gets on the floor and prowls; Blanche did describe him as “bestial,” after all.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★☆☆☆ review here.]
Mescal die-hards might be surprised to learn that Streetcar isn’t all about Stanley. In fact, any production usually rises and falls on its Blanche. Theatergoers likely remember the seductive Hollywood glamour-girl stylings of Gillian Anderson (and that spinning oblong set) at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2016; and, in 2009 at BAM, the Liv Ullmann–directed Sydney Theatre Co. production starring Cate Blanchett as a formidable Blanche and Joel Edgerton as the brother-in-law who both repels and intrigues her. At first, Ferran, a petite brunette, looks like an unconventional choice for the part. (We usually think of Blanche with blond hair, don’t we?) But she imbues Blanche with a kind of spellbinding nervous energy. Her speeches are frenetic, like she’s trying to outrun…something. Her sordid past? The memory of her dead husband? Her lonely life? Also, we never suspect that her Blanche is at all attracted to Stanley. She does, however, seem genuinely interested in his poker pal Mitch (Dwane Walcott), an aw-shucks mama’s boy with an endearing tongue-tied charm.
Here, Blanche’s strongest bond is with Stella, perhaps because Vasan—star of the Peacock comedy series We Are Lady Parts (she plays a guitarist in an all-female Muslim punk band)—is giving the deepest, most multidimensional portrayal of this oft-overlooked character you’ve likely ever seen. She’ll gladly give her needy sister compliments—“It’s just incredible, Blanche, how well you’re looking,” she says in practiced monotone—or sodas or even a few dollars, but she won’t take any slander against her husband. “There are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark—that sort of make everything else seem—unimportant.” We now understand how Stella can so easily forgive Stanley, even after the poker-night “powder-keg” night of violence.
Williams purists might scoff at a few of Frecknall’s directorial flourishes—one would expect nothing less from the director of the current Cabaret revival. A haunting bit of modern dance, for instance, illustrates Blanche’s inextricable ties to her long-dead husband. Props appear only when needed, almost magically, delivered by actors lingering outside the action.
One choice that’s especially inspired: the staging of Stanley and Blanche’s so-called “date”—the one that they’ve had “with each other from the beginning.” We don’t see the actual rape; we don’t need to. What we do see is a half-clothed Blanche, stuck in a downpour of rain, embarrassed and exposed. But the shower is more than just a New Orleans afternoon storm or a pretty stage effect. It’s a woman’s feeble attempt at washing off the ick.
A Streetcar Named Desire opened March 11, 2025, at BAM and runs through April 6. Tickets and information: bam.org
