During an intermission feature that’s part of the National Theatre Live broadcast of A Streetcar Named Desire – this one beamed as a kind of guest showcase from a different London theater, the Young Vic – that theater’s artistic director, David Lan, refers to the play as “classical.” It’s probably a slip of the tongue; he means “classic,” as in exemplary and time-tested, not “classical,” as in ancient. But in fact, watching the first half of the performance at the Amherst Cinema (where there’s an encore showing on October 13th) I had begun thinking of it in classical terms, as in Shakespeare and the Greeks.
As with Shakespearean productions in modern dress, this staging of Tennessee Williams’ indisputably classic drama has been brought up to date in look and feel but without changing the dialogue. And even though Streetcar is only 60-some years old, not 400 or 2500, its milieu and language recall a specific and bygone era. (The iconic Desire Street line that gave the play its name was converted to buses the year after Streetcar premiered.) So that when Gillian Anderson, as Blanche DuBois, looking utterly contemporary in a colorful print dress and loosely flowing hair, asks sister Stella to fetch her a lemon Coke from the corner drug store’s soda fountain, or when she later picks up a cordless phone to place a long-distance call through the operator, the incongruity jars.
You can feel the play reaching for a, well, classical feel: the juxtaposition of two realities, two sensibilities, intended to underline contemporary parallels to a classic text and give universal meaning to its antiquated language. But in this case, I’m not sure what’s accomplished by the juxtaposition. Blanche’s dialogue, certainly, is a kind of heightened diction that reaches a near-poetic plane, and her descent into madness has an almost Lear-like poignancy. But in a way, that only makes its contemporary context and shiny white-laminate set more incongruous. Perhaps we have to be farther away from a “period piece” before we can detach it from its cultural specifics and let it resonate in a Shakespearean way.
Taken on its own terms, though, this Streetcar is impressive. Anderson, who has worked mainly in Britain since her days as Special Agent Scully on The X-Files, is a sharper, pricklier Blanche than we’re used to, more the peppy preppy life of the party than the fluttery flower, and her ultimate disintegration seems a product of terminal burnout, the toll taken by the sheer effort of keeping it up. Vanessa Kirby is likewise a far less passive Stella, and Ben Foster is a bullet-headed, tattooed Stanley Kowalski who, in a directorial interpolation in the aftermath of the iconic “Stella!!” moment, shows him as even more a brute than Brando’s was.
Benedict Andrews’ three-hour production is staged in the round, with the audience not only seated on all sides, but able to see all sides of the stage as the entire set rotates slowly on a turntable. Thus the spectators – not only in the theater but through the lens of the NT Live cameras – observe the scene through window frames and gauzy curtains as they pass across our vision, giving us the rather creepy feeling of peeking into and eavesdropping on the painful, private lives of Williams’ characters.
The featurette that goes along with the NT Live broadcast of Medea (which gets an encore showing at Brattleboro’s Latchis Theater on Sunday) makes explicit the connections between Carrie Cracknell’s up-to-the-minute interpretation and Euripides’ ancient tragedy of jealousy, despair and filicide. Interviews with the director and star are intercut with newspaper headlines about mothers murdering their children. There’s even a psychiatric term for it: the Medea Complex, a mother’s compulsion to kill her children as an act of revenge against their father for abandoning her.
In this domestic tragedy, there’s nothing of Streetcar’s stifling intimacy. The set, on the Olivier Theatre’s towering stage, is a McMansion falling in to ruin. The wallpaper is peeling and just outside the patio doors there is dense forest. Medea (Helen McCrory) is a trophy wife – in this case, a literal trophy of Jason’s raid on her homeland. He’s just jilted her to marry beautiful young Kreusa, who happens to be the daughter of the local king, making her a political stepping-stone.
Almost floating above the mansion’s great room is a banqueting hall where the wedding reception is going on, even as Medea plots to kill the bride with a poisoned cloak (think napalm) and murder her and Jason’s two young boys, “to make you finally feel something of my pain.” A chorus of local women double as Medea’s neighbors and Kreusa’s bridesmaids, alternately warning Medea against her rash plots and gyrating to an eclectic, discordant musical score by the art-pop duo Goldfrapp.
Danny Sapani’s Jason is a beefy bully in a pricey suit and wedding-day boutonniere, offering Medea a fat, guilty check to soothe and silence her. McCrory’s Medea, though, is anything but silent, exuding a raging, spitting “fury that won’t be calmed” every minute she isn’t being corrosively sarcastic or restlessly scheming. Even the tender intervals with her two children are moments of subdued frenzy. Those children – boys aged about six and nine – are onstage for much of the time, distracted from the tragedy looming above them by TV and Game Boys. The sleeping bags they nap in later turn into grisly shrouds.
Cracknell’s insistently modern staging – McCrory’s Medea brushes her teeth and smokes roll-ups – and Ben Power’s muscular, vernacular translation helps us elide the “classical” trappings of this classic as it propels the ancient tale of blood revenge into our modern consciousness.
*If you’d like to be notified of future posts, email StageStruck@crocker.com
During an intermission feature that’s part of the National Theatre Live broadcast of A Streetcar Named Desire – this one beamed as a kind of guest showcase from a different London theater, the Young Vic – that theater’s artistic director, David Lan, refers to the play as “classical.” It’s probably a slip of the tongue; he means “classic,” as in exemplary and time-tested, not “classical,” as in ancient. But in fact, watching the first half of the performance at the Amherst Cinema (where there’s an encore showing on October 13th) I had begun thinking of it in classical terms, as in Shakespeare and the Greeks.
As with Shakespearean productions in modern dress, this staging of Tennessee Williams’ indisputably classic drama has been brought up to date in look and feel but without changing the dialogue. And even though Streetcar is only 60-some years old, not 400 or 2500, its milieu and language recall a specific and bygone era. (The iconic Desire Street line that gave the play its name was converted to buses the year after Streetcar premiered.) So when Gillian Anderson, as Blanche DuBois, looking utterly contemporary in a colorful print dress and loosely flowing hair, asks sister Stella to fetch her a lemon Coke from the corner drug store’s soda fountain, or when she later picks up a cordless phone to place a long-distance call through the operator, the incongruity jars.
You can sense the play reaching for a, well, classical feel: the juxtaposition of two realities, two sensibilities, intended to underline contemporary parallels to a classic text and give universal meaning to its period language. In this case, I’m not sure what’s accomplished by the juxtaposition. Blanche’s dialogue, certainly, is a kind of heightened diction that reaches a near-poetic plane, and her descent into madness has an almost Lear-like poignancy. But in a way, that only makes its contemporary context and shiny white-laminate set more incongruous. Perhaps we have to be farther away from a modern-era period piece before we can detach it from its cultural specifics and let it resonate in a Shakespearean way.
Taken on its own terms, though, this Streetcar is impressive. Anderson, who has worked mainly in Britain since her days as Special Agent Scully on The X-Files, is a sharper, pricklier Blanche than we’re used to, more the peppy life of the party than the fluttery flower, and her ultimate disintegration seems a product of terminal burnout, the toll taken by the sheer effort of keeping it up. Vanessa Kirby is likewise a far less passive Stella, and Ben Foster is a bullet-headed, tattooed Stanley Kowalski who, in a directorial interpolation in the aftermath of the iconic “Stella!!” moment, emerges as even more a brute than Brando’s was.
Benedict Andrews’ three-hour production is staged in the round, with the audience not only seated on all sides, but able to see all sides of the stage as the entire set rotates slowly on a turntable. Thus the spectators – not only in the theater but through the lens of the NT Live cameras – observe the scene through window frames and gauzy curtains as they pass across our vision, giving us the rather creepy feeling of peeking into and eavesdropping on the painful, private lives of Williams’ characters.
The featurette that goes along with the NT Live broadcast of Medea (which has an encore showing at Brattleboro’s Latchis Theater on Sunday) makes explicit the connections between Carrie Cracknell’s up-to-the-minute interpretation and Euripides’ ancient tragedy of jealousy, despair and filicide. Interviews with the director and star are intercut with newspaper headlines about mothers murdering their children. There’s even a psychiatric term for it: the Medea Complex, a mother’s compulsion to kill her children as an act of revenge against their father for abandoning her.
In this domestic tragedy, there’s nothing of Streetcar’s stifling intimacy. The set, on the Olivier Theatre’s towering stage, is a McMansion falling into ruin. The wallpaper is peeling and just outside the patio doors there is dense forest. Medea (Helen McCrory) is a trophy wife – in this case, a literal trophy of her husband Jason’s raid on her homeland. He’s just jilted her to marry beautiful young Kreusa, who happens to be the daughter of the local king, making her a political stepping-stone.
Almost floating above the mansion’s great room is a banqueting hall where the wedding reception is going on, even as Medea plots to kill the bride with a poisoned cloak (think napalm) and murder her and Jason’s two young boys, “to make you finally feel something of my pain.” A chorus of local women double as Medea’s neighbors and Kreusa’s bridesmaids, alternately warning Medea against her rash plots and gyrating to an eclectic, discordant musical score by the art-pop duo Goldfrapp.
Danny Sapani’s Jason is a beefy bully in a pricey suit and wedding-day boutonniere, offering Medea a fat check to soothe and silence her. McCrory’s Medea, though, is anything but silent, exuding a raging, spitting “fury that won’t be calmed” every minute she isn’t being corrosively sarcastic or restlessly scheming. Even the tender intervals with her two children are moments of subdued frenzy. Those children – boys aged about six and nine – are onstage for much of the time, distracted from the tragedy looming above them by TV and Game Boys. The sleeping bags they nap in later turn into grisly shrouds.
Cracknell’s insistently modern staging – McCrory’s Medea brushes her teeth and smokes roll-ups – and Ben Power’s muscular, vernacular translation helps us elide the “classical” trappings of this classic as it propels the ancient tale of blood revenge into our modern consciousness.
If you’d like to be notified of future posts, email StageStruck@crocker.com
