Review: “A Streetcar Named Desire” a Visual, Dramatic Wonder
GREG WILSON/ANDERSON OBSERVER
Warning, Spoilers
The Mill Town Players production of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” is a fine-tuned and deeply disturbing play, nearly faultless in the physical details of its production and the quality of its acting. It is difficult to define it satisfactorily for those who haven’t seen it.
Few have not run upon some public or personal scene of senseless brutality or unimaginable humiliation that is seemed clear would not end well. While we seek to work such scenes out in our heads, it leaves our imaginations reeling and looking for answers, for conclusions
“Streetcar” offers a literary lens, tightly focused on such intolerable cruelty, and it is a triumph.
In the final scene, a woman being led away from a ramshackle house on a nightmare street. She is not young, perhaps in her mid-thirties, yet still attractive, with a certain amount of style - that of the Old South – in both manner and dress. There is no need to identify the two people attending her as a doctor and an asylum nurse, for she is clearly quite mad. The woman is nervous, confused and, in the end even delighted by her new companions, as her she smiles with the look of one who has lost their mind as she leaves the squalor and ruin of her life.
Such a scene is dangerous on the stage, for it can be conceived as contrived or unbelievable. But the danger comes from the fine writing of “Streetcar,” where Williams’ play rarely hits a sour note. It builds slowly, like a fine musical piece to a completely believable crescendo leading to to a shocking finale.
Williams once wrote: “If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.” But angels are in short supply in “Streetcar.”
“A Streetcar Named Desire” resides in the Vieux Carré in New Orleans, where apparently there was just such a streetcar, as well as one labelled “Cemetery,” as well a neighborhood known as the Elysian Fields.
The dazzling set, perhaps the best ever in Upstate theater (with one glitch, which I will describe later), features a small apartment, split into two rooms, by a retractable lace curtain, which is home to Stanley Kowalski (Westin Edwards), a young Polish man perhaps connected to working with automobiles. somehow cryptically connected with the automobile business, and his pregnant bride, Stella (Thelma Cope).
Stella is the product of the exhausted Southern aristocracy. She is lively, engaging and highly sexed young woman who sees romance in the decaying apartment in a run-down part of the New Orleans.
Again, the set so powerfully displays the beauty of the ruin, it serves as a character in the play. It is a wonderful effect and, as the play moves along, oppressive almost beyond words.
The play begins when Stella’s older sister, Blanche (Beth Martin), turns up at this hovel. She is odd, with a slightly overly dramatic approach, coupled with a subdued hysteria, which she repeated battles with whiskey. She is totally appalled apartment, the neighbors and friends form the neighborhood, but especially by Stanley, whom she detests from the start, defining him as “an ape” and, in what turns out to be prophetic, a dirty, violent man. But Blanche realizes her desperate putting on airs is no good with him. And the hatred is mutual. The day of her arrival, Stanley sees through her deceptions, and when she seems to be infecting her sister, he exposes her lies, with contemptuous brutality.
It takes strong writing to make the story, and Blanche’s character, credible, and Williams delivers.
She and her sister were both raised in the decaying Belle Rêve, and Blanche had also married young, at 17, only to quickly discover her new husband was a homosexual who shot himself after she discovered him with another man. After returning home to watch the lingering deaths of three old relatives, until Belle Rêve was lost to creditors, when she moved to Laurel to teach school, and as her mental health declined, took up with many men, ending with her seduction of an adolescent boy her expulsion from the town, where, to quote Stanley: “She was getting to be somewhat better known than the President of the United States.”
By the time Blanche comes to her sister’s apartment, she has manufactured a gaudy and pathetic substitute past for herself, full of rich and handsome suitors, who respectfully admire her mind, but Kowalski tears that down ruthlessly, without any special moral indignation but with a savage, obscene humor that is infinitely more torturing. He also gives her secret away to the one man—a poor specimen, but kind and honest—who might conceivably have saved her and then takes her, casually and contemptuously, himself. The end comes when she tries to tell this to her sister, who, unable to believe it and still go on with her marriage, consents to having her committed to an asylum. This is, I’m afraid, a pretty poor synopsis—there is no way, for instance, to convey the effect Mr. Williams achieves in his last act of a mind desperately retreating into the beautiful, crazy world it has built for itself—but perhaps it is enough to give you the general idea.
My reservations with the story are few. Stella is a pretty, somewhat cultivated girl, and her acceptance of the shoddy apartment in a seedy part of town seems a little contrived. That said, though she does not share the unbalanced nature of her sister, she is living in her own dream reality that an abusive and violent husband is worth of her. Williams’ attempt, and this is true of the sanitized movie version of “Streetcar” as well, to suggest Stanley is a man of enormous sexual attraction, is contrived.
And Blanche’s complete fall feels much too rapid and complete, though it is possible to make a series of bad decisions that lead to a rapid fall, and after all it has to work in the context of the play. I also was confused by her truck full of expense clothes and stack of jewelry, but I will let that go.
But these are minor quibble. “A Streetcar Named Desire” is a brilliant, implacable play about the disintegration of a woman and a lost society. It is thoughtful and compelling.
The Mill Town Players cast is superb. I cannot offer enough kudos to director Christopher Rose for his work on this challenging production.
Beth Martin is transcendent as Blanche, with a superb, steadily rising performance across the almost three-hour production.
Westin Edwards is brooding, twitchy and spot on as the violent and brutish Stanley. He hits the pure ape level, to quote Blanche, and is brutally effective and increasingly petty and nasty.
Thelma Hope is sympathetic and restrained as Stella. She holds many scenes together in a challenging role.
Beverly Clowney brings life and some minor comic relief as upstairs neighbor and landlord Eunice Hubbell.
And Brian Reeder exhibits some serious chops as Blanche’s unhappy suitor. His dignity in scenes which require a lost of difficult listening to Blanche, bother before and during their breakup are solid.
The rest, mostly Stanley’s loud friends were also excellent.
The crew, especially Tony Pena and Jaden Cabral, whose lighting created the perfect touch, and the stage/scene designers, Will Ragland, Chris Rose, Nancy Burkard and Abby Brown, might never again match this level of artistic excellence.
And while it is unclear to me the details of roles of the others (though some are apparent), Assistant Director Cary Doyle, Stage Manager Marcie Antionette Hall, Costume Designer Cyndi Lohrmann and Audio Engineer Michael Hoffman, all obviously rose to the level to make this such a fine production.
A few caveats and some information.
First, and I was assured this will be corrected for future shows, the superior set was marred by the introduction of a large foot locker, which blocked much of the action for folks sitting in the first three rows. It also somewhat tainted the experience for those who, though they could see above it, were distracted from what was an otherwise artistic triumph. I hope this is addressed and have been told it will.
To those who are not familiar with this production, it is nearly three-hours long. That said, it rarely drags and remains compelling theater for the entire play.
It is obviously not kid-friendly, and can also have triggers with scenes that include rape, references to suicide, domestic violence and just adult themes in general.
Finally, it is a hallmark of art to sometimes challenge the audience. It took courage for Mill Town Players to bring this classic Broadway production to this area, knowing it was a major challenge and a risk. Traditionally, with a few notable exceptions, the Upstate flocks to shows that do not require much of the audience beyond buying a ticket and showing up. There is a place for this safe approach, not the least of which is funding our local theaters. But there is also a place for art which, while entertaining, requires a little more from the audience. Thoughtful, well-appointed theater, with superior acting, staging and design which is not all sunshine and happy endings.
I hope locals show up to send the message that we need more of this kind of theater in our area, and that it will be supported.
“A Streetcar Named Desire” continues at the Pelzer Auditorium through Feb. 26. Tickets available here.