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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
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| A Streetcar Named Desire review – Gillian Anderson gives stellar performance | A Streetcar Named Desire review – Gillian Anderson gives stellar performance |
| (2 months later) | |
| American classics are currently getting a theatrical makeover. We've seen A View From the Bridge played as spartan Greek tragedy and The Crucible as a visceral study of a racked community. | American classics are currently getting a theatrical makeover. We've seen A View From the Bridge played as spartan Greek tragedy and The Crucible as a visceral study of a racked community. |
| Now Benedict Andrews, responsible for a startling Young Vic Three Sisters, gives Tennessee Williams's play a radical new twist; and, while there is loss as well as gain, there's no doubt that Gillian Anderson gives a stellar performance as Blanche DuBois. | Now Benedict Andrews, responsible for a startling Young Vic Three Sisters, gives Tennessee Williams's play a radical new twist; and, while there is loss as well as gain, there's no doubt that Gillian Anderson gives a stellar performance as Blanche DuBois. |
| Andrews's big idea is to keep the acting space in perpetual motion. In Magda Willi's design, the stage is a skeletal rectangle that revolves constantly. The result is that we get a shifting perspective on the home in New Orleans where Blanche, in flight from her Southern past, has come to stay with her sister, Stella, and her unwelcoming brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. | Andrews's big idea is to keep the acting space in perpetual motion. In Magda Willi's design, the stage is a skeletal rectangle that revolves constantly. The result is that we get a shifting perspective on the home in New Orleans where Blanche, in flight from her Southern past, has come to stay with her sister, Stella, and her unwelcoming brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. |
| At one point, for instance, we are invited to gaze on three simultaneous actions: a card game between Stanley and his boozy mates; a private chat between Blanche and an admirer; and Stella brushing her teeth in the bathroom. | At one point, for instance, we are invited to gaze on three simultaneous actions: a card game between Stanley and his boozy mates; a private chat between Blanche and an admirer; and Stella brushing her teeth in the bathroom. |
| The shifting focus sometimes becomes a distraction and makes the dialogue hard to hear: just as you're getting into a scene, the characters float out of view. It is more important, I believe, that the play rather than the stage should be moving. | The shifting focus sometimes becomes a distraction and makes the dialogue hard to hear: just as you're getting into a scene, the characters float out of view. It is more important, I believe, that the play rather than the stage should be moving. |
| But there are other times when the rotating stage works to the play's advantage. In the scene where Stanley overhears Blanche condemning him as an animal with something sub-human about him, we get a sudden close-up of him and a vivid idea of the rancour the statement breeds. More explosively, we also get an intimate glimpse of the passionate love-making between Stella and Stanley after they have engaged in one of their periodic domestic rows. | But there are other times when the rotating stage works to the play's advantage. In the scene where Stanley overhears Blanche condemning him as an animal with something sub-human about him, we get a sudden close-up of him and a vivid idea of the rancour the statement breeds. More explosively, we also get an intimate glimpse of the passionate love-making between Stella and Stanley after they have engaged in one of their periodic domestic rows. |
| However, the real test of any production of Williams's play is whether it allows you to see each character's point of view. If Blanche is simply played as a cracked Southern belle and Stanley as a coarse brute, the play descends into melodrama. But here Gillian Anderson captures both Blanche's airy pretensions to grandeur and her desolate loneliness. Her Blanche is a deeply sensuous, tactile woman whose natural instinct is to stroke Stanley's hairy forearms or to provocatively disrobe in front of a flimsy curtain. But Anderson also conveys Blanche's emotional solitude: she is especially fine in the scene with her nervous beau, Mitch, where you sense two helpless people desperately reaching out to each other. | However, the real test of any production of Williams's play is whether it allows you to see each character's point of view. If Blanche is simply played as a cracked Southern belle and Stanley as a coarse brute, the play descends into melodrama. But here Gillian Anderson captures both Blanche's airy pretensions to grandeur and her desolate loneliness. Her Blanche is a deeply sensuous, tactile woman whose natural instinct is to stroke Stanley's hairy forearms or to provocatively disrobe in front of a flimsy curtain. But Anderson also conveys Blanche's emotional solitude: she is especially fine in the scene with her nervous beau, Mitch, where you sense two helpless people desperately reaching out to each other. |
| Ben Foster equally plays Stanley as a deeply physical man whose natural instinct when crossed is to lash out. There is something dangerous about this sweaty, tattooed, close-cropped Stanley who has recently been discharged from the military and who has not lost his combative instinct. At the same time, you understand his refusal to be patronised and insulted by his affected sister-in-law. And there is a first-rate performance from Vanessa Kirby as Stella: a loving, straightforward woman whose first loyalty is to Stanley but who finds herself becoming a reluctant battle-zone in which the other characters wage their war. | Ben Foster equally plays Stanley as a deeply physical man whose natural instinct when crossed is to lash out. There is something dangerous about this sweaty, tattooed, close-cropped Stanley who has recently been discharged from the military and who has not lost his combative instinct. At the same time, you understand his refusal to be patronised and insulted by his affected sister-in-law. And there is a first-rate performance from Vanessa Kirby as Stella: a loving, straightforward woman whose first loyalty is to Stanley but who finds herself becoming a reluctant battle-zone in which the other characters wage their war. |
| I don't find every aspect of Andrews's production plausible. The updating to the present sits oddly with a play that talks of period bandleaders like Xavier Cugat and where the feel is of an America on the verge of postwar economic expansion. In the urge to make the play seem urgent and immediate some of Williams's poetry and humour gets lost. And it seems strange that Blanche should say of the Kowalski home that "only Mr Edgar Allan Poe could do it justice" when it looks as white and pristine as a hospital ward. | I don't find every aspect of Andrews's production plausible. The updating to the present sits oddly with a play that talks of period bandleaders like Xavier Cugat and where the feel is of an America on the verge of postwar economic expansion. In the urge to make the play seem urgent and immediate some of Williams's poetry and humour gets lost. And it seems strange that Blanche should say of the Kowalski home that "only Mr Edgar Allan Poe could do it justice" when it looks as white and pristine as a hospital ward. |
| But this is still a powerful production that reminds us, thanks to the sterling performances, that Williams deals with incomplete people. In the end Blanche's woozy lyricism is as insufficient as Stanley's base materialism; and, in the performances of Anderson and Foster, this sense of two needy people colliding comes strongly across. | But this is still a powerful production that reminds us, thanks to the sterling performances, that Williams deals with incomplete people. In the end Blanche's woozy lyricism is as insufficient as Stanley's base materialism; and, in the performances of Anderson and Foster, this sense of two needy people colliding comes strongly across. |
| • Until 19 September. Box office: 020 7922 2922. Venue: Young Vic, London | • Until 19 September. Box office: 020 7922 2922. Venue: Young Vic, London |
| • A Streetcar Named Desire will be broadcast in cinemas worldwide as part of the National Theatre Live programme, on 16 September. On sale soon. Venue: National Theatre. | • A Streetcar Named Desire will be broadcast in cinemas worldwide as part of the National Theatre Live programme, on 16 September. On sale soon. Venue: National Theatre. |
| 'Anderson is utterly compelling' – Susannah Clapp's review |