The first thing you notice about Elizabeth Newman’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire is Jeanine Byrne’s atmospheric lighting which successfully transports you to a hot sweaty room in New Orleans.
The constant swilling of bourbon and playing cards on a hot evening are the backdrop to a pressure cooker domestic environment. The lyrical Southern accent is a beguiling stage prop for Blanche DuBois played by Kirsty Stuart.
A sense of loss bubbles beneath the surface of the character’s fantasy world where self-delusion delivers a potent escape. Her dark past is obscured with colourful dresses and a suitcase full of furs and costume jewellery, abetted by an ever-changing persona. Streetcar feels strangely of the moment, particularly through the character of Stanley Kowalski (Matthew Trevannion), a violent and controlling tattooed male bubbling with anger ready to explode at any moment.
Whether it’s his pregnant wife Stella (Nalini Chetty) or her older sister Dubois, Stanley consistently looks for ways to brutalise both women, who are two very different sisters from the same background.
Stanley resents being debased as animalistic in the face of Blanche’s prim and proper Southern belle, while that not might be true, mental illness and a sense of the uncanny constantly lurk in the background suggesting the deep complexities at work. The work of Tennessee Williams continues to fit in with new ideas and ways of thinking and while it first premiered in 1947 this remains a thoroughly modern and mesmerising production.
A Streetcar Named Desire, The Royal Lyceum Edinburgh
