A Streetcar Named Desire at Marigny Opera House thru August 24
Shortly after I saw The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans’ (TWTC) production of A Streetcar Named Desire, I (and presumably the rest of the audience) received an email which said:
We are aware of a first time technical glitch that happened tonight at the top of Act 2. One of our show operation computers had a technical issue, causing a sound cue to continue into the scene, instead of fading out as programmed. Our Stage Manager did an emergency override and quickly recovered the show. Thank you for your understanding.
Very classy to admit a mistake like that. And it explained something–why the audio had (briefly) drowned out the actors–I had been wondering about.
There were other things this Streetcar made me wonder about (more on that later), but one thing about which I had no doubt was that Charlie Carr gave one of the finest interpretations of Blanche DuBois I’ve ever seen, if not the best.
Some may say that Carr is too young for the schoolteacher from Laurel, but Blanche is only supposed to be about 31 years old; Carr seems about right for that. If Blanche avoids the light so (metaphors aside) people won’t see how “old” she is, chalk that up to a sign of the times (late 1940s) when a woman might be considered an “old maid” if she wasn’t married by the time she entered her 4th decade. (As if to compensate for the script, nowadays, actresses typically in their 40s are cast in the role.) So the youthful Carr might be ideally close to Williams’ original vision of Blanche.
More importantly, Carr gives a meticulous reading of Williams’ language. Every phrase, every line gets just the right amount of weight, of a lingering over certain words, from Carr; it’s almost like hearing these well-known speeches for the first time.
Because of this, Blanche came into focus for me in a way she never has before, and it’s not a pretty picture. She’s coquettish, imperious, high strung. She’s an inveterate liar; unlike other Blanches, lies roll off Carr’s tongue so smoothly you’d think she’s on the level. She’s an alcoholic; Carr makes no apologies for her Blanche needing some liquor in her to function. Carr makes clear that Blanche is not a very nice or easy person to get along with; her standards are unreachably high…except for herself. With her repeated, venomous put-downs of brother-in-law Stanley, you could even say she’s a “fcking bitch.”
To Carr’s credit, she doesn’t try to make Blanche sympathetic, yet her innate soft, touching presence (as anyone who saw her in last year’s Spring Storm will recognize) compensates, allowing us to be fascinated, if not seduced, by her Blanche.
Carr’s performance was revelatory in a way similar to Alexandria Miles’ text-based Juliet (Ah, Juliet’s the smartest person in the room) was for me last year; because Carr brought all of Blanche’s nasty qualities into such fine focus, I finally understood why I’ve never cared or been moved much by her fate.
I could quibble that Carr might’ve given a little more shading to Blanche’s spell-binding monolog about her young husband, but even that could be interpreted as a recitation, however dramatic and moving as it is, that she’s giving before and it’s become performative by now. Otherwise, Carr’s Blanche is pure theatrical magic.
Elizabeth McCoy and Charlie Carr in A Streetcar Named Desire (photo by Brittney Werner)
Carr is well-matched by Elizabeth McCoy as her younger sister Stella and Robinson J. Cyprian as Blanche’s would-be beau, Mitch.
Unlike in 2018’s Streetcar at Le Petit where she essayed the same role and I found her too tough a Stella to believe she’d put up with Stanley’s ill-treatment of her, here McCoy, with the guidance of Director Augustin J Correro, finds the role’s sweet spot: strong-minded enough so that you accept that she’d have the gumption to leave small-town Mississippi for New Orleans, yet not so much so that you question her loyalty to her husband. If anything, playing Little Sis to Big Sis Blanche throughout childhood, probably prepared her well for Stanley.
Cyprian makes for an ideal Mitch. Radiating a softer embodiment of masculinity than Stanley’s more rough-hewn one, Cyprian convinces as a “mama’s boy”; I’ve never heard his line “I’ll be alone when she [his mother] goes”, said to such plaintive effect. At 6 foot 10 inches, Cyprian adds 8 ½ inches to the standard Mitch (which a slight change in the script reflects) so that by the end he appears almost like a hulking, wounded animal and heartbreakingly so.
As for Sean Richmond’s Stanley, it’s a good enough characterization; he’s tough but not stupid, a guy’s guy, as he should be. In his big moments–the ripping of his t-shirt after yelling “Stella!”, the tossing of the radio out the window, his assault on Blanche–he displays a slight hesitancy, however, when we should see Stanley’s impulsiveness, for which Correro must share some of the blame.
Other than that, Correro delivers an excellent production, intelligently explicating the text and. aided by Nick Shackleford’s superb audioscape of ominous trains, music & other such sounds, creating a great sense of tension even if we (by which I mean those audience members who are familiar with the play) know what’s coming next.
Steve Schepker’s multi-story set well-utilizes the Marigny Opera House’s vast height; his situating Blanche’s section of the Kowalski apartment downstage allows for a different and very effective perspective than most designers achieve for these cramped quarters. Diane K. Baas contributes her usual mood-enhancing lighting.
As for the things I wondered about, let’s start with the moments in Streetcar where you might go “Nobody talks or acts like that” of which more than a few exist in the play. Yet watching this finely wrought production, I recalled certain folks I know here about whom I’ve thought “If they were a character in a play or movie, you’d think ‘Nobody acts like that.’” Even Richmond’s accent, or manner of speaking, which at first didn’t strike me as Polish or New Orleanian grew on me as it reminded me of acquaintances who have similarly unique voices.
Blanche may rail against “brutishness” but she’s just as much a brute in her own way.
As for Stanley’s assault, I don’t completely buy it. Sure, he’s probably horny as hell since he most likely hasn’t had sex with his pregnant wife for a few months. But rape, of course, is an act of violence, not passion, so why would this soon-to-be father attack a woman who’ll soon be out of his house? And wouldn’t Blanche claw and scratch his face leaving marks that would need explaining? Please don’t tell me she’d “lie back and enjoy it.” It’s not a stretch to imagine that Williams transferred homosexual fantasies of domination to a heterosexual situation; the results, with Blanche seeming as though she “deserved” it (“We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning!”), now appear grossly misogynistic.
That said, there’s one other thing I wondered as I watched this production. I admired it for all the above reasons, but it seemed so distant to me. For example, Blanche’s use of the derogatory slur “Polack”; I haven’t heard anybody use that since Archie Bunker hurled it at son-in-law Mike.
Unfortunately, for all Correro’s expertise in helming this production, he has nothing new to say about the script, the characters, or the situations that we’re watching. Yes, he’s added pole dancers in the background to cover up scene changes, but they don’t contribute much. If they’re supposed to indicate a French Quarter setting, the outfits that Adrienne Simmons and Dr. Stephanie Baran wear don’t seem of a place with the rest of Kelsey Brehm’s otherwise worthy costumes. (One friend waggishly opined that they were there cause Stanley’s “Pole-ish”.)
If Streetcar is as iconic as TWTC’s marketing materials say it is–and I don’t disagree about that–then it behooves them to trust that audiences have enough familiarity with it so a new approach or interpretation is in order.
For example, I don’t fully understand Blanche’s proclivity towards teenage boys on sexual, aesthetic or, especially, moral grounds, but we need only look at recent St. Tammany Parish headlines to learn of such real life occurrences involving female high school teachers. Why not update the setting to reflect that? And while you’re updating, perhaps cast a Latino actor as Stanley so that even if you don’t change the script’s “Polack”, we’ll understand how prejudiced views are, sadly, timeless.
And Stanley’s abuse of Stella which leads to “make up sex” seems especially noxious in the post-#MeToo era. Once again, it comes off as a gay playwright’s view of straight sexual relations; despite Stella’s protestations of love and understanding, it requires a new interpretation in 2024.
So do see this Streetcar which has been extended through August 24. Do know, however, it travels along the same tracks as it always has.
[For tickets and further information, go to https://ci.ovationtix.com/35398/production/1182263]
Julius Caesar at Tulane’s Lupin Theater
Prior to seeing the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival’s recent Julius Caesar at Tulane, I had attended just two other productions of this drama, one quite good (Tulane’s Drama Department), the other okay (Phyllida Lloyd’s at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse), interestingly both done with all-female casts
Still, I couldn’t really say I knew the play or fully understood what it was about.
I’m thus happy to report that I have a much better comprehension of it after seeing Salvatore Mannino’s interpretation of it. That said, I wasn’t exactly thrilled that his rendering made me feel like I wanted to shower immediately to get the rotten stench of humanity’s pig-headed rulers off my skin, but, hey, power to him for well-reflecting today’s headlines.
Julius Caesar is a funny/weird play. Its “greatest hits” lines (“Beware the Ides of March”, “Et tu, Brute?”, “Friends, Romans, countrymen…”, etc.) are front-loaded in its first half. The second act, as it’s typically divided, features heated if not exactly the most involving battle scenes similar to what occurs in the “War of the Roses” plays. What’s really going on in this knotty play?
Mannino, wisely having cut many pages from the long-ish script, offers a vision that posits it doesn’t really matter who’s in charge–they’re all out for themselves and there’s always someone in the wings waiting to take over the reins of power.
As Cassius schemes to get Brutus to join him in the overthrowing of Caesar, it’s never really clear what Caesar has done that’s so bad. That ambition and the lust for power might just be the prime motivating forces, with Brutus alone requiring more transparent reasons for joining the conspirators, seems to be the Bard’s point, one which Mannino astutely honored and amplified in an unsettlingly ambiguous (Who’s good? Who’s bad? Who really knows?) way.
Mannino imaginatively set this Caesar in a non-specified, seemingly dystopian world; no white togas here. Alexander le Vaillant Freer bathed the stage in dark, ominous lighting; Steve Gilliland’s sound was rumbly, menacing. Hope Bennett’s kindasorta Mad Maxy outfits costumed the actors in blacks, browns, grays which suited the overall atmosphere, though I wish there had been a little something to help distinguish between the pro- and anti-Caesar forces.
Most provocative were James Lanius III’s abstract projections which evoked both cells & blood as well as the cosmos, and well-expressed a certain timelessness.
Erin Cessna excellently conveyed Cassius’ gravitas and got every ounce of meaning out of her lines. James Bartelle was a sly and authoritative Mark Anthony, keeping us guessing as to his allegiances.
Though Silas Cooper might have enjoyed his words more, he made for an appropriately powerful Julius Caesar, even if we didn’t know whether to salute or scorn him, which is just as it should be. I think Wendy Miklovic has a worthy Brutus in her though she was still shaping her characterization and conquering her lines on opening night; I suspect she gave a smoother performance as the run progressed.
The cast of Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar is classified as a “tragedy”. The biggest tragedy? That the cycle of self-serving rulers continues on and on. It’s to our good fortune, tho, that Mannino & Co. can make it so stageworthy.
In Memoriam
I was saddened to learn of the recent passing of Kiane D. Davis whose work I had admired in a number of shows.
About JPAS’ 2022 production of Shrek the Musical, I wrote “Its Act One came to full life when Kiane D. Davis, as the fiery Dragon, lit up the stage with her breathtaking rendition of Forever.”
Kiane D. Davis (with Josiah Rogers on left) in Shrek the Musical
Later that year, though I was underwhelmed by Sweet Potato Queens, the Musical itself, I noted that “Director Kiane D. Davis does extremely well with this material. She keeps the production moving and has her cast invest honest emotions in these characters. [You] could hardly ask for a better production.”
And in 2023, about Sistas the Musical, also a JPAS presentation, I enjoyed “Kiane D. Davis’ sure-handed, sweet production. Davis, who also choreographed with verve and plays the academic sister Simone, has done an amazing job of keeping her cast’s bodies in motion as they tidy the attic without it ever seeming fussy or arbitrary, no mean feat. She’s also imbued the musical numbers with a suitable flair without ever overdoing it; you believe that these are everyday women (albeit with fabulous voices) singing these songs, not Vegas stars who’ve been plunked down into a St. Louis loft.”
I concluded my Sweet Potato Queens review with “I hope Davis’ll soon be directing other, more interesting and challenging scripts.” I’m so terribly saddened that we won’t have the pleasure of watching her do this any more. She will be missed. R.I.P.
