A Streetcar Named Desire
Paul Mescal and Patsy Ferran
If Blanche duBois were in the audience, she wouldn’t sit through this production.
Blanche, as played by some actresses, would refuse. She would demand, indignant and offended, to be escorted out of the theater and to the nearest acceptable cocktail bar, insulted beyond belief that her senses could be assaulted by this brutal play.
But Blanche as directed by Rebecca Frecknall in Tennessee Wiliams’ Pulitzer Prize winner would be physically unable to watch this show. Just a few moments of the first scene, as the cast assembles on the bare-bones wooden box of a set, while a drummer smashes away, would assault her nerves so deeply that she would lose consciousness and be carried out of the theater.
Williams’ 1948 drama chronicles the tragedy of Blanche duBois, a former teacher who arrives unexpectedly at the home of her sister and brother-in-law, Stella and Stanley Kowalski. Having lost the family home, Belle Reeve, to debts, Blanche is unhoused and unmoored, drinking heavily and avoiding the reality of her life at all costs. Appalled by her sister’s living conditions and the behavior of her husband, Blanche immediately clashes with Stanley, who resents her high and mighty airs and is suspicious of her history.
Played by Patsy Ferran as a quivering bundle of tightly-wound nerves, Tennessee Williams’ doomed heroine is already far down the path to a mental breakdown the moment she steps onstage. But she’s far from a delicate Southern belle; to have reached this point of descent, Blanche has fallen a long way already.
She needs a rival to push her over the edge, and with Paul Mescal playing Stanley, she does. Ferran’s take on Blanche is unique, and Mescal also embodies new aspects of Stanley, bringing a seductive, almost feline quality to the man. Rather than assault Blanche’s senses with deliberate crudeness, he is quietly predatory, speaking softly as he circles his prey.
Brought to immortal life by Vivien Leigh in the 1951 film, Blanche is often performed as a delicate flower, but Ferran’s Blanche has a steelier backbone. This is a Blanche I could imagine as a teacher, commanding control of a rowdy classroom. Despite her desperation to deceive, she is aware of her conditions and how far she has fallen, clinging desperately to the last dregs of propriety she can claim in her life. She knows she needs to survive, but she doesn’t know how.
Blanche is unable to find anything resembling that propriety at Stella and Stanley’s claustrophobic apartment. Stella, performed with earthy sensuality by Anjana Vasan, is content with her home and husband, relishing in their sex life. For the first time, I was curious about Blanche and Stella’s past and how they had interacted as children at Belle Reeve. When Blanche, appalled by Stanley hitting Stella, asks why she remains in her marriage, Stella informs her sister, “I’m not in anything I want to get out of.” Vasan’s delivery of that line, brimming with both pity and passion – along with the sensually choreographed encounter Stanley and Stella shared in the previous scene – provides more context/history to her marriage than several pages of Williams’ script.
As their upstairs neighbors, Steve (Alexander Eliot) and Eunice Hubbel (Janet Etuk), provide further context and atmosphere for the shabby corner of New Orleans that Blanche finds herself in. This is much to the production’s benefit, which offers no physical environment for the audience to absorb. The set, designed by Madeleine Girling, consists of an elevated wooden platform with a surrounding edge on which the actors stand or sit and watch the action onstage. A balcony above the stage features a drummer (Tom Penn) and singer (Gabriela García), providing ambience that is at times lovely and powerful and, at times, unnecessary and annoying.
Merle Hensel’s casually contemporary costumes, with Lee Curran’s lighting and Peter Rice’s sound further complement the mood, but one wishes Fracknell had devoted more attention to those sensory details and less to bringing subtext to the surface. Williams’ script is so well-written, there is no need for a drum solo to foreshadow violence or for a literal rainstorm to drown Blanche to demonstrate her being overwhelmed and that she is headed toward a breakdown.
Her suffering is understandable. I have never seen a Streetcar that demonstrated the cruelty of the patriarchy, and the web of society Blanche is entangled within, so clearly. It's no surprise she grasps at one last chance of stability and happiness with Stanley’s friend Mitch (Eduardo Ackerman), a gentler soul who recognizes a fellow person in need.
It’s a stark contrast to Stanley’s anger, which pulses throughout the play, propelling its 2 hours and 45 minutes forward, careening towards its tragic, and terrifying, conclusion. Blanche and Stanley’s inevitable, disastrous encounter is more quiet, and thus more terrifying. Mescal’s attack of Blanche almost resembles an embrace, and his delivery of, “Tiger, tiger!” more resembles a purr than an assault. This Streetcar’s bells may be quiet, but they leave a lingering echo.