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.