A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

1997
Studio Theatre, Northampton College, Booth Lane, Northampton

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Directing A Streetcar Named Desire, one can allow the actors to run away with the histrionics or anger of the piece but it is the more subtle twists and turns of the emotions of the main characters that make it good dramatic theatre.

Of all the Tennesse Williams plays, Streetcar is probably best known for its film version with Marlon Brando as Stanley and Vivien Leigh as Blanche. It was also successfully staged in Boston and New York in 1947 when it ran for 855 performances.

The play opens with Blanche arriving at Stella's apartment in Elysian Fields, the run down French quarter of New Orleans and, from the very beginning, she finds fault with "this horrible place". Blanche has, however, very little choice but to impose herself on her sister and her husband, Stanley, when she reveals that she has "lost" Belle Reve, their plantation home on the Mississippi.

As the ghosts from Blanche‘s past in Laural and the Hotel Flamingo, along with her enjoyment of a "shot" of drink begin to invade on her present, there is a gradual disintegration of Blanche's grasp on her own fictions and the harsh reality of life that she is a woman who "made the discovery - love. All at once and much, much too completely".

This production is directed by Rob Kendall. He has also directed: Antony and Cleopatra (1996)