Jere-Rigged

The Kindness of Strangers

Celebrity Sightings of the Day: Last night at Studio 54, I again saw actor Victor Garber in the audience of A Streetcar Named Desire. That's twice in four days. And on the way home from the Desk Jockey Day Job, I saw Veronica Mars' Enrico Colantoni outside the Penninsula Hotel at 55th Street and 5th Avenue.

In all the Sturm und Drang of my emotional reaction to seeing A Streetcar Named Desire last night, I realized after the fact that I forgot to actually write about the show. I'm feeling better today, by the way. Some sleep, even with bad dreams, did an enormous amount of good.

I'm always torn when writing about classic plays...do I recap the plot that you all know already and risk boring people, or do I let it go and confuse potential readers who actually might not know these plays? Anyway, I was always taught to write as though the reader knows nothing, so here's a brief synopsis of Streetcar: Faded belle Blanche DuBois shows up on the doorstep of her sister Stella's apartment in 1947 New Orleans. Their old home place, a plantation in Mississippi, has been lost and Blanche has left her teaching position. Blanche thinks Stanley, Stella's working class husband, isn't good enough for her. He thinks she's a prissy bitch who's living above her station in life. Things come to head when Stanley does some investigating into Blanche's past and...well, the picture is a little different from what she's painted for them.

The show hasn't gotten much buzz, except for the controversial casting of John C. Reilly in the iconic role of Stanley Kowalski, defined for all time (or did it define HIM?) by Marlon Brando in the original production and film. Reilly most certainly isn't the walking personification of sex that others have been in this role, but the choice to play the character as a regular guy is an intriguing one. Reilly is a Stanley who could be your older brother, that guy you went to high school with, or your neighbour. We all know guys just like this. And Reilly is as natural and unselfconscious as you might expect the great actor to be in this part. He strips off his shirt with some regularity, revealing the start of a beer belly and the physique of a regular joe...again, somewhat perfect.

And make no mistake...Reilly exudes a certain sexuality here, playing Stanley as an uneducated, unrefined lug whose life is ruled, to a certain extent, by his dick. The chemistry is palpable with Amy Ryan's Stella and the electricity in the air whenever they're together leaves no question as to what the high-born Stella sees in the low-born Stanley.

Natasha Richardson is a particularly glam Blanche, making her first entrance in a gorgeous suit and matching hat. Richardson makes an interesting, almost bipolar, Blanche, seemingly normal, if a touch eccentric, at the start and gradually adding more and more notes of fragility as the play progresses. But, even when Blanche is at her worst, Richardson manages to convey the woman underneath the mania.

Tony-nominee Amy Ryan is an excellent Stella, conveying the sexual spark that attracts her to Stanley, as well as the family loyalty that binds her to Blanche. When those two become mutually exclusive, she is almost torn in two.

And can I just mention the set design by Robert Brill? The set, representing Stanley and Stella's apartment and the street outside is gorgeous. It definitely sums up the sort of romantic squalor in which the Kowalskis reside. I wanted to move right in, redo the kitchen and replace those dated appliances, and keep everything else.

The Roundabout has also renovated Studio 54 for this production, installing traditional theatre seats on the orchestra level and exposing the shiny hardwood floor beneath. The new seats are comfy and have plenty of legroom. Studio 54 is not the only flexible seating auditorium on Broadway, with the company able to restore the table-and-chair setup that has been used previously should a future production warrant it. It's all beautiful.

So, yeah...it's hard to go wrong with a Streetcar, but this production does manage to do a lot of things right.

Posted by Jere at May 19, 2005 05:36 PM | TrackBack