“I don’t want realism… I’ll tell you what I want. Magic!”
In
Tennessee Williams’ Southern Gothic melodrama, Blanche DuBois is a storyteller.
She has to be. As an unmarried woman in the 1940s, dealing with the loss of her
parents and the family home, she must keep up the pretence that everything is
okay. But when she moves in with her sister, Stella, and Stella’s husband, Stanley,
the holes in her carefully told tales start to unravel and the way forward
becomes less and less clear.
The
inspiration for Blanche is Williams’ sister, Rose, who was diagnosed with
schizophrenia and later lobotomised. The success of A Streetcar Named Desire
enabled the playwright to pay for Rose’s ongoing care. But a clear diagnosis
for Blanche’s flights of fancy and delusions are unclear – left purposely vague
in the text, and difficult to align with how we currently discuss mental
illness.
For
Melbourne Theatre Company’s new production, helmed by Artistic Director
Anne-Louise Sarks, Blanche’s tendency to exaggerate or embellish or lie isn’t simply
an affect of her anxiety or a fragile grip on reality. Here it’s more clearly articulated
as a desperation in Blanche to keep her life afloat – without having to settle
down with a violent man and disappear into a non-descript building, even in a
place called Elysian Fields.
Streetcar is part of the pop culture
firmament. People quote “Stella! Stellaaaa!” without necessarily knowing where
it’s from and ‘A Streetcar Named Marge’ is one of the most famous episodes of The
Simpsons – from back in its fourth season in 1992. Jessica Tandy won a Tony
in the original production on Broadway. Vivien Leigh played her in the film,
directed by Elia Kazan. The role is probably as coveted by female performers,
as Hamlet is by men.
Nearly
eighty years after the play first appeared on Broadway, it continues to be sadly
relevant. Intimate partner violence remains a major problem and as far as we’ve
come in approaching and treating mental illness, there remains a stigma for anyone
afflicted – whether diagnosed or not. The long path to a proper diagnosis is a pervasive
issue for health systems across the world.
I don’t think there is ever a question of whether this play is worth performing. Some of its language is of its time. Some of the humour for modern audiences comes from archaic phrases and attitudes, for sure. But Williams is a master of language – and the battles of wits are exemplary throughout.
But the
subject matter requires a thoughtful approach. The story of family violence and
mental illness and society’s blind-eye to both could be problematic in the
wrong hands. And as Blanche says, when arguing with Mitch about why she hides
away in the dark, she doesn’t want realism. And neither does this play.
Director
Sarks knows the dialogue is heightened and has the cast play it rapid-fire; it's musical in its articulation. Blanche’s stories never go in a straight line and the rest of
the characters are asked to match her provocations. The unravelling of Stanley
feels more and more like him being unable to keep up with her quickfire brain,
regardless of whether she’s deliberately lying or losing her mind.
In Mel Page’s
two-level revolving set, we are treated to a beautifully rendered two-room
apartment for Stella and Stanley (the bedroom separated only be a sheer
curtain). In the upper level, there's an undefined room – sometimes literally of upstairs
neighbours, sometimes an impressionistic space in Blanche’s mind, containing
her memories and her fears. When we are in Stella’s apartment, the window above
is a place for Eunice to watch and to listen – and a clear symbol of that age-old
question of how involved we should get in the lives of the people next door or
downstairs. The image of that window – floating in the dark – is confronting,
as we watch those minor characters, watching the violence unfold below.
The entire
cast is incredible. Michelle Lim Davidson, as Stella, gives a exquisitely-wrought
performance of an abused woman who feels like she has to stay with husband.
Steve Mouzakis’ Mitch is endearingly awkward. Mark Leonard Winter finds a way
to make Stanley threatening and pathetic. His calling for Stella is described in
the text as “heaven-splitting violence” but Winter holds back from that – the repetition
of her name becomes the overwhelming threat and he makes Stanley smaller and
smaller as he begs his wife to return. It’s a shocking moment, of course, but playing
it without the expected bravado is a revelation.
But central to this production is the extraordinary Nikki Shiels as Blanche. You’d think after I saw her on stage in Kip Williams’ one-performer version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, I couldn’t be more impressed – but this performance is one for the ages. She turns Blanche’s mercurial nature into a shield, and a strength. Shiels is magnetic always, but here – beyond Blanche being the focus of the scene, at the heights of this transformative turn, everything else floats away. When watching Shiels as Blanche in full-flight, she might well have been all alone on the Playhouse stage again.
Niklas Pajanti’s
lighting is evocative of the later summer afternoons in the play, but occasionally
it snaps our focus from apartment to apartment, performer to performer. And the
judiciously used true-blackouts are electric. Stefan Gregory’s music is both
evocative of the period and sometimes very modern – another key into this
production’s clear-eyed statement that this story is both of the past and now.
Anne-Louise
Sarks has drawn together a cast at the top of their game and surrounded them
with artists of the highest calibre. I have been impressed with her work as a
director since I saw the Hayloft Project’s production of The Nest in 2010
– an adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s The Philistines. Since then, she has proven
herself a director in demand, travelling to Sydney as Resident Director of
Belvoir and then to England, where she was the Artistic Director of the Lyric
Ensemble at the Lyric Hammersmith. Her production of Blasted at
Malthouse in 2018 remains one of the great nights of Melbourne theatre.
Sarks’ work here is brilliant. Every choice perfectly judged. The violence is there, it's felt but it's off-stage. Some of the imagery she has created will stay with me for a long while.
This is a Streetcar for 2024 without struggling
to update or shave off its edges. It is a contemporary reckoning with an
eighty-year-old text that makes the old seem new again.
It is what
Blanche wants. It’s magic.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
A Streetcar Named Desire is on at the Playhouse at Arts Centre Melbourne until August 17th
Photos: Pia Johnson
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