A Streetcar Named Desire, ADC Theatre, Cambridge
The school groups are in for Streetcar’s opening night at the adc, thronging what I must (in my best Southern drawl) refer to as the sidewalk, and after seeing this stupendous production they will be turning in some blindingly good essays, for Bread Theatre and Pembroke Players rise to the challenge of staging the most famous visit by a sister in theatre history and knock it out the park.
In the accent stakes Maya MacFarlane takes the crown, her bustling Eustice Hubble transporting us to a New Orleans where ‘life goes on’ whatever a woman’s husband might get up to. She is aided in creating this strong sense of place by the set design: a makeshift partition divides the two rooms that make up the Kowalskis’ apartment (‘Two? This one…and the other one?’ Blanche says in disbelief). Lauren Akinluyi sensitively portrays Stella, distracting herself from difficult emotions by seeing to the household chores. Jude King is excellent as Stanley, his impatience with Blanche tangible as he sneers that the ‘admirer’ who gave her those furs ‘must’ve had a lot of…admiration.’ There are several brilliant added touches in this production and the first is the low, buzzing synth sound that accompanies Stella’s descent back to the Kowalski apartment after Stanley has seemingly crossed a line. Blanche has warned of his ‘animal force’ but it is this that mesmerises Stella: when he smashed up light bulbs with the heel of her shoe, she was ‘sort of thrilled by it’.
The heartbreaking news that tempers Stella’s joy at being reunited with her sister is of course the tragic loss of the old family home, Belle Reve – and Stella was the lucky one, as she was only present for the funerals, and they’re ‘prettier than the deaths’ of their loved ones. Jules Coyle delivers a towering performance as Blanche, bleating about these tragedies and turning rhapsodical as her even greater and more significant loss is finally revealed. There is another inventive directorial choice as the memory of Allan Gray is brought arrestingly to life, to the haunting tune of the Varsouviana polka, and in the scene with the old flower seller you could have heard a pin drop.
Jacob Mellor excels as Harold ‘Mitch’ Mitchell, creating touchingly comic moments with Blanche as a glimmer of hope flickers into life, and the shock when his look of wonderment turns to rage is devastating. The most fiery rage of all, though, is of course shown by Stanley. He looks more like a ‘Polak’ here than Brando ever did, but this slur causes a far more ferocious reaction in him than Blanche’s comments about him being ‘ape-like’ and ‘sub-human’, which he overhears: he asserts that he is an American. He is the product of an America that has just been through the brutality of the Second World War. When his obsessive desire to assert the Napoleonic Code that ‘we got here in Louisiana’ drives him to dark extremes of behaviour, the costume department and King’s bristling stage presence combine to make the levels of menace skyrocket.
May this dazzling production inspire those school groups, and all other theatre-goers, to keep coming back to Elysian Fields Avenue, in ‘the Quarter’, for many years to come.
