Theater: Broadhurst Theatre / 235 West 44th Street, New York, NY, 10036
Synopsis:
Williams' classic drama, set in the French Quarter of 1940's New Orleans, exposes the delusions of fragile Southern belle Blanche DuBois, when she comes to live with her sister, Stella, and her brother-in-law Stanley.
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April 22, 2012: “The Poker Night” was once the working title for what would become Tennessee Williams’s most celebrated work. So perhaps it’s appropriate that a poker game provides one of the few moments approaching excitement in the torpid revival of the play that was renamed “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
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April 22, 2012: The advertising for the multiracial Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire starring Blair Underwood and Nicole Ari Parker bears little relation to the play. The poster proclaims: “The American classic never looked this good.” That seems to imply a more picturesque view of the seedy mid-century setting in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and hotter versions of Blanche and Stanley, the adversaries on either side of Tennessee Williams’ bruising clash between sensitivity and unvarnished reality. Even more perplexing is the tagline adorning the theater marquee: “Give in to it.” What, exactly? In a drama fueled by self-delusion, alcohol, rape and madness, none of those options seems all that enticing.
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April 22, 2012: In the end, Stanley will have his awful, violent revenge on Blanche. She will see it coming — she'll struggle, her eyes will go wide like a deer's and she'll try to bolt. But he'll get her and then he will surely break her. What the races are of the actors on stage is immaterial.
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April 22, 2012: Sometimes there's yuks so quickly. The latest production of Tennessee Williams' masterwork "A Streetcar Named Desire" is an unfathomable misstep from the gifted Emily Mann, whose work I have often admired as both director and playwright. Helmer Mann and her starry cast treat the work as if it were a combination soap opera and sitcom. The result is embarrassing and sad.
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April 22, 2012: Tennessee William long wanted to see “A Streetcar Named Desire” cast with African-American actors, according to the director who now has brought a multi-racial production to Broadway: “He’d always known, as someone who knows New Orleans, how right this is,” director Emily Mann, who was personally acquainted with the playwright, said recently.
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