REVIEW: A Streetcar Named Desire pulls into Theatre Calgary for the first time in over two decades
iPhoto caption: Photo by Nanc Price.
Whether you’ve seen the acclaimed 1951 film or experienced cultural osmosis, there’s no doubt you’ve at least heard of A Streetcar Named Desire. And now, 23 years since its last major Calgary production, local audiences have the chance to see if the Pulitzer Prize-winning play is really worth all the historical hype.
A co-production between Theatre Calgary and Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre, this tackling of Tennessee Williams’ modern classic is enthusiastically faithful, dropping us right onto the sultry and bustling streets of 1947 New Orleans. You’ll find everything you might expect from a take on Streetcar: sensuality, top-notch performances, and all. But as much as this production honours Williams’ tried-and-true work, it is also shackled by it, and forgoes the opportunity to excavate it from its golden past.
Apart from the odd physical brawl, this play is a lot of talk and the script’s drama is staked firmly in the wavering tension between characters and their incongruent truths. The majority of the action takes place in the confines of a thimble-sized apartment where Southern belle Blanche DuBois (Lindsey Angell) is staying with her sister Stella (Heidi Damayo) and brother-in-law Stanley (Stafford Perry). A longtime widow, freshly unemployed, and having lost the family home, Blanche’s visit to New Orleans is a fraught effort to find solace and — in typical ‘40s fashion — marriage. Despite catching the eye of bachelor Harold “Mitch” Mitchell (Sheldon Elter), Blanche’s stay is sullied by Stanley’s distrust in her, and the refuge she hoped to find at her sister’s home becomes anything but.
This production is a pristinely oiled machine; the cast negotiates Williams’ text with seasoned agility. Though linguistically modest, the lyricism of the script makes for technically challenging terrain and director Daryl Cloran’s navigational surety is clear as he steers the play at a thrumming momentum.
From the get-go, Perry’s Stanley Kowalski dominates the stage. All macho flair, his performance is equal parts disturbing and entertaining. He brings authority and precision to every scene and infuses the iconic “STELLA!” lines with all the drama and zeal they require. Though I would have been curious to see a reimagined take on the famous character (Marlon Brando seems to haunt this production), the mastery Perry demonstrates is unquestionable.
The real showstopper is Angell’s Blanche. Bursting with exaggerated Southern whimsy, the character is beyond fun to watch. Her drawling, sing-song accent is a spellbinding paintbrush for Williams’ poeticism and her perpetual breathlessness — as if gasping for air or teetering on edge of a sob — is enrapturing. No matter the depths of the character’s masquerade, Angell succeeds in making Blanche a paradoxically sincere protagonist that had me holding on to her every syllable.
In an effort to enhance its visual dynamism, the production boasts lovely set design choices by Brian Dudkiewicz. The stifling, period-accurate apartment, while static, is never stale and creates a perfect battlefield for Stanley and Blanche’s rivalry. What stuck out to me the most is the backdrop: what at first looks like a painted New Orleans cityscape flat is later revealed to be a sky-high scrim, giving way to neon signs, a stage for flashbacks, and an elevated live band that charges the space with ghostly ethereality (made all the more potent by sound designer and composer Joelysa Pankanea’s original music).
Despite being penned over 75 years ago, Streetcar holds up. This comes as little surprise given the play’s revered stature within the theatrical canon. It’s difficult to be immune to Williams’ unpretentious yet gut-punching lyricism, and themes that were once subversive in the 1940s continue to ring true today. (A misogynist tyrant who insists on representing “true” American ideals? Hmm.)
That being said, the production is not an easy watch (and not just by virtue of its 3 hour runtime). At the core of this play is a woman who, struggling to reconcile with a traumatic past, continues to suffer at the mercy of men. An attempted sexual assault left me squirming in my seat and, though only implicitly depicted through a blackout, the play’s pivotal and actualized assault is a tough pill to swallow. Yes, it makes the story real and critically relevant, but it also makes it hard.
Don’t be discouraged, though — things are certainly not all doom and Southern Gothic gloom here. When not actively testing your tolerance for toxic masculinity, the production is oddly funny. From Stanley’s no-nonsense sarcasm, to Blanche’s colourful fantasies, to Mitch’s bumbling courtship, Cloran unearths the script’s charm and balances the story’s weight with flashes of levity.
Still, I found myself surprised at how often the opening night audience laughed throughout the performance. While you could attribute this to rising levels of discomfort, I also wondered whether it was a symptom of a larger, more nefarious issue: the ease with which today’s audiences can dismiss female victims on the basis of their unconventional or unlikeable personalities.
Intentional or not, this production has tapped into some vital questions surrounding the subjectivity and weaponization of truth. For those game enough to handle the discomfort, it’s worth the watch.
A Streetcar Named Desire runs at Theatre Calgary until February 23. Tickets are available here.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this review claimed that Theatre Calgary had not done a production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 40 years. That figure has since been corrected to 23 years.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
Eve Beauchamp
Eve Beauchamp (they/them) is an award-winning Calgary-based theatre artist, playwright, and graduate of the BFA in Acting at the University of Ottawa. They are the co-artistic director of Levity Theatre Company and primarily create work that explores queerness, capitalism, and neurodivergence through humour, poetry, and storytelling. Currently, you can find them pursuing their Master of Fine Arts in Drama at the University of Calgary.
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