Desire, Death, Elysian Fields

Doug and I saw A Streetcar Named Desire Wednesday at Studio 54. I had mixed feelings about it--some aspects of this production were brilliant, some were pretty bad. The set is fantastic--it really evokes New Orleans with two levels and lots of gritty, realistic details. There's lots of music in it--one of the actors sings jazz during the scene changes. As Stella says, "New Orleans isn't like other cities"--it's another character in this version.

I've never really cared for Blanche--her tittery attempts at seduction and being a femme fatale get on my nerves a bit (I react the same way to Sally Bowles and Amanda Wingfield). But I thought Natasha Richardson did a pretty decent job--not amazing, but she was good. She hit a groove, though, during her monologue where she talks about her husband--I almost stopped breathing watching her. Very, very well-done. She got the accent as well. Amy Ryan was pretty good as Stella; I was not impressed with the guy who played Mitch (Mitch is stolid, salt of the earth--not developmentally disabled. This guy seemed VERY slow).

John C. Reilley was seriously miscast as Stanley. His performance did not succeed on one level--Doug didn't object to him quite as strongly, but the more I think about it, the more I criticize it. For one, he obviously doesn't look like Stanley--he doesn't have the animal physique, the cut muscles, etc. that Stanley should have. It was not a pretty sight when he took off his shirt. It was difficult to see, on looks alone, why Stella would've allowed herself to be "pulled down off of them columns," as he says. But that wouldn't have mattered if JCR had believed he was Stanley--if he had displayed that arrogance, that crude sureness that Stanley has. He didn't. JCR's body language was very supplicatory--he had a bowed head and upturned hands a lot of the time, as though pleading for understanding. I especially noticed this in the scene where Stanley tells Stella what Blanche did in Laurel--he looked as though he were asking for Stella's understanding (he sounded that way too--he pitched many of his line readings rather high). Stanley doesn't ASK anyone anything; he TELLS them and too bad if you don't like it, babe. He leads with his balls and his chest, not his head and hands. Hell, *I* could play a better Stanley--I'm an athlete and can pull off that cocky walk. Also technique! He mumbled so many of those wonderful lines--one of my favorite Stanley speeches is (paraphrased from memory, I know this play so well!)--"When we first met, you and I, you told me I was common. How right you was, baby, I was common as dirt. I pulled you down offa them columns and how you loved it, getting them colored lights going...wasn't it all okay until she showed up?" He mumbled this speech terribly--I never even heard the line about the colored lights and I was specifically listening for it (I love that line because it makes me think of "The Lights of Zetar," a Star Trek TOS Turd Season episode.) And this is a weirdly specific criticism--but I think that JCR does not have a very good ear. Stanley's dialogue has a really specific sound to it--I can hear exactly how I think it should sound, there's a strong, declamatory rhythm to it that serves as a counterpoint to Blanche's flirtatious dialogue. "I once went out with a girl who said to me 'I am the glamorous type, I am the glamorous type!' I said 'So what.'" B: "Did it end the romance?" S: "It ended the conversation--that was all. Some men are took in by this glamor stuff and some are not." The actor needs to...land on his lines more, savor his words more. It's not poetry, exactly, but Stanley's choice of language is deliberate and not just utilitarian. JCR did none of that. I really was very disappointed in his performance.

For some reason, they left out Blanche's singing "it's only a paper moon" during the Stanley-Stella conversation when Blanche is bathing. It might've been about the money, I guess--song rights are expensive--but this is a premier production after all, and I love the juxtaposition of those lyrics "it's only a paper moon...sailing over a cardboard sea" against the sordid reality of what Stanley and Stella are discussing.

Something I noticed--as sordid as the New Orleans environment is intended to be (tenement apartments, no privacy, no air conditioning), and as I'm sure it was to a New York audience in the late '40s--Streetcar actually romanticizes it, with all that steeeeeamy heat and random jazz singers shuffling by and everyone lying around in slips and "lapping up liquor like a wildcat!" because it's too damn HOT to do anything else. I'm like "hey, I wanna do that...." which I don't think is the message of the play.

Overall, I'm really glad I went. Man, I love that play.