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A Streetcar Named Desire – The Little Theatre of Alexandria

Jordan Wright
September 15, 2014
Special to The Alexandria Times
 

Camden Michael Gonzalez (Stanley), Jennifer Berry (Blanche) and Anna Fagan (Stella) - Photo credit Matthew Randall

Camden Michael Gonzalez (Stanley), Jennifer Berry (Blanche) and Anna Fagan (Stella) – Photo credit Matthew Randall

Tennessee Williams’ South was a passionate, languorous, hotbed of emotion.  His characters were real, too real for some when it premiered on Broadway in 1947, but nonetheless part of the daily fabric of life – in high places and low.  In A Streetcar Named Desire Williams cracked open the Pandora’s box of life’s numberless miseries, shining a light on the destructive relationships women accept and the fantasies they concoct to get through the evil that men do.

Considered radical in its day for its themes of homosexuality, immigration, race, class and domestic violence, the subject matter is still searingly relevant today.  And though we have had major advances in women’s rights, we are still grappling with these issues.  How these overlying themes and intense emotions are explored in the play is riveting in a perverse sort of way.  It is poignant and tragic and relevant and grotesquely intimate.

When Southern belle Blanche arrives in New Orleans at her sister’s two-room apartment with a suitcase full of feather boas and heartbreaks, she encounters Stella’s low life of a husband, Stanley Kowalski, a Polish factory worker who is light years removed from the sisters’ highborn upbringing.  Blanche is shocked to see her sister married to a man as abusive and uncultivated as Stanley.  “He’s a different species,” Stella explains.

Blanche tries to charm Stanley with feminine wiles and upper class charm, but he doesn’t buy it, or her excuses of how she was forced to forfeit her family’s plantation home.  He threatens the sisters, demanding his inheritance according to Louisiana’s archaic Napoleonic Code.  Both Blanche, who uses fantasy and seduction to cope with life’s disappointments, and Stella, who confuses brutality with love, allow Stanley to dominate them.

Anna Fagan (Stella) and Jennifer Berry (Blanche) - Photo credit Matthew Randall

Anna Fagan (Stella) and Jennifer Berry (Blanche) – Photo credit Matthew Randall

Anna Fagan plays the submissive Stella, approaching the duality of her character’s Stockholm Syndrome-like condition with a blend of subtle poise and ferocity.  Yet it is Jennifer Berry’s Blanche who has the most quotable lines.  Berry does a fine job of portraying Blanche as both flighty and vulnerable, giving a creditable portrait of a woman clawing her way out of desperate circumstances.  “I haven’t been so good, these last few years,” she admits when accused of debauchery.

Camden Michael Gonzalez (Stanley) - Photo Credit Matthew Randall

Camden Michael Gonzalez (Stanley) – Photo Credit Matthew Randall

Unfortunately this triangle is not equilateral in emotion. Camden Michael Gonzalez seems miscast as Stanley.  In a role that demands more complexity than a one-dimensional portrait of a brute, his Stanley lacks pathos and gravitas.  Surprisingly, the lesser role of Mitch Mitchell, Blanche’s suitor, as played by Marshall Shirley, shows greater depth.

Marshall Shirley (Mitch) and Jennifer Berry (Blanche) - Photo credit Matthew Randall

Marshall Shirley (Mitch) and Jennifer Berry (Blanche) – Photo credit Matthew Randall

Baron Pugh’s clever set design of the apartment’s soulless interior is framed by a two-story muslin scrim that soft-focuses the outside world, yet lets in music and the sights and sounds of the mean streets – often easier to hear than the actors’ lines.  Another wrinkle in this production is the hurried pacing, which feels more industrialized North than unhurried South.  Yet for those who have never experienced a Tennessee Williams’ play, the searing action, plot twists and memorable lines are eternally delicious.

Limited engagement runs through September 28th at The Little Theatre of Alexandria, 600 Wolfe Street. For tickets and information call the box office at 703 683-0496 or visit www.thelittletheatre.com

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