There She Goes Again

A Streetcar Named Desire at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

Gillian Anderson and Ben Foster in A Streetcar Named Desire.

            The female characters of Tennessee Williams defy “definitive” interpretations; they shift and waft in and out of view unpredictably, much like their motivations.  Plus, it’s hard to keep any performance definitive when the play in question keeps being revived on and off Broadway every other season.  That being said, Gillian Anderson, in a Young Vic production of A Streetcar Named Desire at St. Ann’s Warehouse through June 4^th, has laid claim to the closest thing possible to a definitive Blanche DuBois, and the rest of the production ain’t half-bad either.

            If nothing else, director Benedict Andrews has succeeded in developing a theme of the play rarely seen in previous productions, and definitely not the excellent but rigidly censored 1951 film.  Stella DuBois (Vanessa Kirby), defending her privileged sister to her brutish husband Stanley Kowalski (the mesmerizing, Brando-defying Ben Foster), spits, in one scene, “People like you abused her and forced her to change.”  And this production, beyond the obligatory murky exploration of sexual politics, dives deeper into the culpability, complicity, and mindset of the abused — usually women.  One after the other, women are beaten and abandoned by their emotionally vacant men and then return to those same abusers.  Explains Stella, “There are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark that sort of make everything else seem unimportant.”  But the enormous set (by Magda Willi), the skeleton of a home, rotating infinitesimally slowly and dripping water from the functioning showerhead in the bathroom, suggests there’s a cyclical erosion here that can’t be explained away by pure animal attraction.

            Making the case for that attraction is Mr. Foster as a magnificently loathsome and spitfire Stanley, earthen and unapologetic.  The sheer force of Marlon Brando’s charisma and physicality in the original production and later the movie let audiences gloss over his behavior (the forced hack-job editing of the scene where Stanley rapes his sister-in-law didn’t help matters either), but Mr. Foster doesn’t duck his character’s responsibilities.  He nonchalantly accepts them, utterly believably, and his chemistry with Ms. Kirby, his Stella — perfect but for her physical flawlessness, which belies a character who’s supposedly become “plump as a little partridge” — is palpable.

            Ms. Anderson, naturally, steals the show, but the verb “steals” doesn’t quite fit here because the ensemble seems to relax into ceding it to her.  This production is set in the present (effectively seamlessly, though the phrase “bobby-soxers and drugstore Romeos” is a little out of place), and Ms. Anderson’s Blanche, outfitted with an unmatched sense of entitlement and a matched Louis Vuitton luggage set, seems at first to be trapped interminably in the shadow of Cate Blanchett’s equivalent character from Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, who sported similar blonde hair and white leather.  But she slowly rises to the occasion, knocking every monologue out of the park and anchoring the ensemble, and her scenes with her suitor, Mitch (Corey Johnson, inheriting another borderline-definitive interpretation from Karl Malden) are poignant and sweet.  She runs the gamut of emotions over the course of three and a half hours of wrenching drama, and never appears to break a sweat.

            She comes closest when she’s trying to make herself heard over the occasionally distracting direction.  Williams’ plays exist as a facsimile of realism, hard-edged but only beneath the surface.  Mr. Andrews’ view of Streetcar, meanwhile, is a little wishy-washy for my taste.  The inter-scene blasts of ambient music are a little too overwrought and distracting to be justified, and some of his choices are just bizarre — that aforementioned rape scene is framed as gentle and almost austere, belying the animal brutality from whence it’s meant to stem.  One thing you do have to give him credit for, though, is his prowess as a creator of visual theater – there are moments where the stark fishbowl of the set looks like a Hopper painting, or when that rotating stage blocks brief moments of the action, letting you wallow in your horror as you imagine what could be happening behind the column, or beyond the hanging sheet.  The Kowalskis’ apartment only has two rooms, but it has far too many nooks and crannies for comfort.

Music Makers

Shuffle Along at the Music Box Theatre

(L-R: Audra McDonald, Billy Porter, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Joshua Henry, and Brandon Victor Dixon in Shuffle Along.)

   The great genius of Savion Glover, who choreographed the new(ish) musical Shuffle Along at the Music Box, as a tap choreographer is that he never has felt the pressure, emanating from I know not whence, to eternally organize his dancers into razor-sharp horizontal lines planted on the stage like a middle school graduation.  Instead, his formations collapse and expand like Hoberman spheres, supplanting and frequently overshadowing the words and music, to the point that two of the most memorable numbers in Shuffle Along don’t bother playing any at all.  The first act has such a weightlessness and effervescence that it’s almost a shock that this musical becomes a dramatically vital juggernaut midway through the second.  Dance while you can, boys and girls.  Reality’s coming.

    Glover, of course, has had a twenty-year relationship with the librettist/director of this production, the prolific George C. Wolfe, who uses this backstage account of the 1921 title show, the “first Broadway musical with a jazz score,” mostly to prove once and for all that he is better at directing musicals than you are.  The show is seamless, not because it is fully assured but because its assurance sneaks up on you, taking what seem to be caricatures of mostly-forgotten figures in black theater history -- F.E. Miller (Brian Stokes Mitchell), Aubrey Lyles (Billy Porter), Noble Sissle (Joshua Henry), Eubie Blake (Brandon Victor Dixon), and Lottie Gee (Audra McDonald) -- and imbuing them with empathy, in a sort of anti-Hamilton in which the subjects come to terms with the heartbreaking reality that history will leave them behind.
    Hamilton, of course, Shuffle Along’s chief competition for the Best Musical Tony, was the catalyst for Shuffle Along lead producer Scott Rudin’s attempt to switch the show into the Revival category, which is, expectedly, ridiculous -- this version has an entirely different book and is actually about the very musical of which it was claiming to be a revival (equivalent to Kiss Me Kate purporting to be a revival of The Taming of the Shrew).  The truth is that it’s unlikely Shuffle Along will give Hamilton a run for its considerable money.  It’s great, but not that great, and it’s steeped in tradition rather than ushering in revolution, which seems to be the word of the day.
    But that’s a shame, because everyone involved is so at the top of their respective games that it’s tempting to imagine it opening any other season.  Audra McDonald, the headline attraction, who was sick through most of previews and leaves the show for three months starting in June, is, as usual, the soprano personified.  That anyone is able to exude pathos while tap-dancing in heels would come as a surprise to any audience member unfamiliar with her increasingly legendary career.  Billy Porter (late of Kinky Boots) remains shockingly charismatic with a penetrating voice to match.  And Brooks Ashmankas, playing all the white parts in the show with a villainous glee, manages not to be upstaged by one of the most talented African-American casts assembled on a Broadway stage in recent memory.
    Playing downtown theater patron Carl Van Vechten in the final scene, Ashmankas rasps, in the most hauntingly memorable new lyric in the show, “They won’t remember Shuffle Along and they won’t remember you,” drowning out original librettist Miller as he frustratedly attempts to defend his groundbreaking musical.  What sticks with you after the second act, surprisingly, isn’t that golden choreography but the image of Porter, Mitchell, McDonald, Dixon, and Henry standing stiffly at the center of the stage, surrounded by their detractors, holding back tears as they proverbially fade away into the little-explored annals of black theater history.  There is a pride and a dignity in this show that suggests it does, in fact, belong in this season after all.