Would Tennessee Williams have liked The Streetcar Project’s production of his most famous play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the 1948 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama that follows the destitute Blanche as she seeks refuge with her sister Stella and Stella’s rough-and-tumble husband Stanley Kowalski?
Williams, never a hyper-realistic playwright, created a sometimes dream-like atmosphere. The published script of “Streetcar” begins with a page-long description of how he imagined the set: “The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue … Above the music of the ‘Blue Piano’ the voices of people … can be heard overlapping.” Think of the other-worldly call of a flower-seller outside the door of the Kowalskis’ apartment: “Flores para los muertos.” Or Blanche’s longing for the magic of a paper lantern to illuminate only the beauty of life (and disguise her aging features).
Can just four actors in a play written for 12 conjure those ethereal moments in ways that offer further insight into the struggle and tragedy of Blanche, the character that certainly Williams most identified with, and the beauty that she—and Williams—sought?
The Streetcar Project’s production, now in a short run on American Conservatory Theater’s expansive mainstage in San Francisco, has no props at all. That takes getting used to, for sure.
Blanche’s ever-changing wardrobe is not depicted literally. Sound effects Williams imagined, to create the atmosphere of New Orleans’ raunchy French Quarter, exist but are minimal: the rattle of trains passing, the music and the invasive noise that reverberate in Blanche’s head, shouts from the ever-screaming upstairs neighbors.
Because there is no set, save for, initially, a stage ghost-light (the company has been touring this show around the country to site-specific spaces), the actors wander around the stage and the house. Sometimes they pace like caged animals (thankfully, without the usual distracting Southern accents). Blanche initially emerges down an aisle.
For the portion of the audience that’s seated onstage (I was one), the actors sometimes are hovering behind them, or off in a barely visible corner.
Notably, the actors are at the top of their game.
As Stella, Heather Lind is tough, feisty, even playful, and full of love and compassion for her troubled older sister.
It may be hard to get Marlon Brando’s sexy Stanley out of your mind, but Brad Koed’s version hits all the right notes in conjuring this almost child-like man. His need for Stella feels visceral.
And James Russell’s Mitch—he also pitches in occasionally in peripheral roles—is utterly believable as an unassuming man who’s dazzled and confused by the alluring Blanche.
Most importantly, Lucy Owen’s Blanche (Owen is the creator of the Project, with director Nick Westrate) is surely the Blanche that Williams must have dreamed of: tough as nails and yet fragile and vulnerable; a liar and a truth-teller; as impossible to capture and contain as a fluttering moth. You can imagine the woman she’d have been if her circumstances were different, if this nervous, desperate soul had had a different fate.
I believe that all that’s needed for a play to work is good actors and a strong director; everything else is frosting on the cake. This production represents a sort of test case. It doesn’t matter what a long-dead playwright thinks of it; it only matters if the actors can affect us, the audience, in meaningful ways.
I did spend a lot of time throughout the almost-three-hour-long play registering all the missing stage elements and wondering whether this approach to the script was valid and valuable, or more distracting in its minimalist staging than is tolerable.
Yet there’s nothing more memorable than brilliant, truthful performances, and this “Streetcar,” under Westrate’s assured direction, has that throughout.
“A Streetcar Named Desire” continues through Feb. 1 at American Conservatory Theater’s Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $25-$130 at act-sf.org.