An excellent drinking game could be made of the endless pseudo-trendy theatrical cliches on display in the Almeida Theatre’s revival of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, newly imported by the Brooklyn Academy of Music. An onstage percussionist banging away at his drums to indicate heightened tension? Check. Key moments in the play accompanied by interpretive dance? Check. An absence of scenery, with the Kowalskis’ apartment conveyed merely by a raised platform with a smattering of chairs? Check. Actors standing or sitting around observing the action even when they’re not in the scene? Check. If you were downing shots every time a directorial flourish reared its ugly head, you’d wind up in the emergency room.
The revival has been directed by Rebecca Frecknall, whose production of Cabaret, excuse me, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, was a sensation in London but has proved more than a little divisive on Broadway. Here, she not so much stages Williams’ play but comments on it. It feels less like an actual production than a series of annotations scribbled in her copy of the text.
Anyone unfamiliar with the play (and yes, those people do exist) should be warned that they won’t actually be seeing A Streetcar Named Desire but rather on overeager, modernistic riff on it. Two such newbies with whom I spoke afterward expressed befuddlement about the experience; one expressed disbelief that this was considered one of the greatest American plays, the other wanted to know if Blanche was gang-raped at the end. The latter’s confusion was understandable, since the climactic scene between Blanche and Stanley also featured several other male performers onstage, crawling toward her like four-legged zombies.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
The virtually sold-out show is one of the hottest tickets in town, thanks to the presence of newly minted movie star Paul Mescal (Aftersun, All of Us Strangers, Gladiator II) as Stanley. The Irish actor certainly has the physical credentials for the role, his handsome features accompanied by an impressive physique that is on ample display. And he does fine with it, effectively mining the laughs stemming from such things as his character’s constant evocations of the “Napoleonic code” and conveying considerable charm as well as well as animalistic menace. But his American accent (nobody speaks with a Southern drawl in this production, because that would be, you know, appropriate) feels off, his inflections flattened to an artificial degree.
Patsy Ferran makes for a highly unconventional Blanche, coming across less like a faded Southern belle with airs than merely a high-strung neurotic who frankly proves much more annoying than necessary. The physically slight, brunette actress seems too young for the role, and delivers her lines with such rapidity that many of them are lost. Not that you could hear them clearly even if she spoke more slowly, thanks to that amplified drummer (Tom Penn), perched on a platform above the stage, pounding away so deafeningly it’s as if he’s channeling Buddy Rich on meth.
Anjana Vasan and Dwane Walcott provide solid if not particularly memorable work as Stella and Mitch, while the rest of the cast barely make an impression at all. As for ambiance, forget it: with the absence of scenery, the action might as well be taking place in New Rochelle as New Orleans. The frequent references to the cramped apartment seem silly, since the characters have plenty of room to move on the large stage, but you can’t blame them for wanting to get out since it seems to frequently rain heavily inside. Actors periodically take turns walking around the platform, with Blanche singing “It’s Only a Paper Moon” and Stanley looking like a dog circling before marking his spot.
This sort of over-the-top staging is frequently described as attempting to find the “essence” of a play by stripping it of its naturalistic trappings. But Williams did that himself with the poetry of his writing. It’s a shame that so many contemporary directors don’t seem to trust the works they stage, laboring so furiously to improve them that they wind up merely diminishing them in the process. Especially for those experiencing them for the first time. Fortunately, Streetcar will live on long after such trendy directors as Frecknall have left the scene.
