Review: A Streetcar Named Desire

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Above: Joel Edgerton (Stanley) and Robin McLeavy (Stella) in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Above right: Joel Edgerton (Stanley), Cate Blanchett (Blanche) and Robin McLeavy (Stella) in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Images: © Lisa Tomasetti. Sydney Theatre Company.

POSTED: 06 SEPTEMBER 2009

A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams

(Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay, Sydney | Until 17 October)

Thankfully, on official opening night of A Streetcar Named Desire, the radio missed Cate Blanchett’s head and sailed through the window, just as Liv Ullmann, the play’s Director, had planned. We were all relieved — but then another thought.

Maybe my patience had been stretched during the week on the subject of “femme fatales” (okay, Della Bosca may be a pants idiot, but surely the punishment has outweighed the crime) so I couldn’t help but think that if Blanche had copped it early in the piece, had some kinda sense knocked in, then the disharmony and pain to family and friends might have been avoided. But that would have been another play, and not the Pulitzer-winning drama by Tennessee Williams.

And what a play it is.

Most know the story. A fading southern belle, Blanche Dubois (Cate Blanchett), emotionally fragile, secretly alcoholic, mental hinges at breaking point, comes to stay with her gentle, vulnerable and compliant sister Stella (Robyn McLeavy) and brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski (Joel Edgerton), an unsophisticated, self-centred, and brutish working-class man described by Blanche as a “survivor of the stone age”.

Stanley may be uneducated but he’s not stupid, and he comprehends every jibe and sarcastic taunt about his life circumstances that Blanche hands out over the steamy, stifling summer months of Stella’s pregnancy.

Considering Blanche feigns the original damsel in distress — virginally pure, quivering hand to forehead, provokingly deluded in her monotonous fantasies of imminent chivalric rescue — and Stanley is not just the exact opposite of the heroic white knight, but openly scorns such idyllic notions, the sparks are bound to ignite. And they do.

On the night that the baby arrives and Stella is taken to hospital, the drunken Blanche lashes out, exposed and degraded by Stanley’s cruel disclosures about her past, disclosures that destroy her last chance — marriage to the dishwater-dull, but kind and considerate, Mitch (Tim Richards). Stanley releases his pent-up resentments in the basest of ways, and Blanche’s hinges finally snap.

It is an exquisite performance by Blanchett, her finely boned physique and her superb dramatic skills a perfect fit in what is recognised as one of the great female roles in theatre. An audience could easily despise Blanche and her pretentious ways, but Blanchett’s performance prohibits that, and her delivery of the final words — “Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” — could make you cry.

Equally, Edgerton’s forceful physicality and burly strength are ideally suited to the primal behavior required and delivered in full in his performance. His ability to pose menace and threat through the delivery of a sniggering chuckle is chilling. The grime and shining sweat that embellish his skin throughout the play are a clever costuming ruse that adds much to the perception of “beast”.

There is nothing second-rate about the other performances either. McLeavy’s in particular. She has a difficult role, the in-between, the peacemaker, the passive victim of those who care most but are powerful, self-absorbed and destructive. Stella’s character could easily be lost in the force of the others, but McLeavy navigates the storms with poise, and establishes her stage presence with a quiet confidence.

The set is a masterpiece of mood and function, enabling transition through space and time with minimal fuss. Those responsible are experts to be admired and congratulated.

And at the end, the audience response said it all — spontaneously and overwhelmingly. Liv Ullmann the veteran Norwegian actor and director, grinning exhuberently, appeared on stage with the cast to take her well deserved call, her delight matching ours.

This is a show that will inevitably, and quite rightly, be included in any future list of great performances not just by the Sydney Theatre Company, but in the annals of Australian theatre generally.

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