'Streetcar Named Desire' remains definitive, searing war of wills in solid Paramount production

Some productions of Tennessee Williams’ 1947 masterpiece “A Streetcar Named Desire” stand out for depicting the drippy atmospherics of a sweltering New Orleans summer, others for capturing the heat of intense sexual passion, and yet others for layering the revelations of how far the aging Southern belle, Blanche DuBois, has fallen and the expressionistic theatricality of her delicate mental state.

The strength of this solid production at the Paramount Theatre’s intimate Copley Theatre isn’t that it’s especially atmospheric, or sexy, or theatrical — those qualities are present but not prominent. This “Streetcar,” directed by Jim Corti and Elizabeth Swanson, focuses on and succeeds at providing a resolute narrative and thematic clarity.

The two iconic characters of the play, Blanche (Amanda Drinkall) and her nemesis brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski (Casey Hoekstra), couldn’t be more clearly headed for catastrophe from the time Blanche arrives from Mississippi to stay with him and her younger sister Stella in their barely one-bedroom apartment.

She loves poetry and seems from the opening scene on the edge of a neurotic breakdown with Drinkall investing Blanche’s attraction to liquor with blatant desperation. Stanley quotes the populist politician Huey Long — “Every man is a king!” — and in Hoekstra’s take, expresses less than zero patience for Blanche’s presence from scene one.

It’s extreme. She’s all cultured refinement, at least on the surface. He’s all meat and potatoes. I never paid much attention to how his entrance involves him delivering meat to his wife. He doesn’t hand it to her; he tosses it. She’s delicate, jumping at the sound of a cat. He’s mean, ready to exacerbate her jumpiness at every opportunity.

It’s not the most subtle approach to this material, but it’s effective. The juxtaposition even finds a surprising amount of quality humor early on. And I did find myself wondering if the directors emphasized this divide as a contemporary way into what’s now a nearly 80-year-old play.

After all, our society feels as divided these days as Blanche and Stanley, living in two opposing notions of reality and engaged in a high stakes struggle for power. If this was a thought, I commend Corti and Swanson for capturing it without needing any performative wink.

Liz Lauren

All the performances here are excellent, but I found Alina Taber’s Stella to be the critical one that makes this approach work. She convincingly straddles these two worlds, deeply sympathetic to Blanche, fiercely attracted to Stanley.

Like Blanche, she grew up in a world of Southern manners and can call Stanley a “pig” for his behavior at a meal, barely flinching when he lashes out. And she can unapologetically criticize Blanche when the older sister acts as if she’s “superior” while taking advantage of Stanley’s hospitality, no matter how resentfully he provides it.

In most cases, the final scene feels all about Blanche’s descent into mental incapacity after the climactic standoff with Stanley. And Drinkall does a superb job of taking what can sometimes be a stylized mental illness and making it feel immediate, an advantage of starting her off on unsteady ground to begin with.

To the production’s credit, I found the focus of this ending to be appropriately on Stella, forced to make an impossible choice, sort of knowing how cruel her husband really is but acknowledging that, after giving birth to their first child, she can’t let herself admit it.

Liz Lauren

Away from the dynamics of the central threesome, this production can feel a bit dutiful. The relationship between Blanche and her potential savior Mitch (Ben Page) doesn’t have much dimension. Williams included a lot of offstage music and sounds in this play, and although they’re all properly provided in Forrest Gregor’s sound design, they don’t seep into the fabric of the environment, nor does the music that’s clearly intended to be in Blanche’s head deliver the haunting quality it should.

This is also one of the harder works from a set design perspective, and Angela Weber Miller doesn’t solve some of the challenges, creating an awkward sense of what’s overheard and what isn’t.

More importantly, the set neglects that key moments happen outside. For likely the play’s most famous sequence, when Stanley screams after his wife in apologetic desperation after hitting her, and she returns, Hoekstra gets down on the floor. Unfortunately, it takes him out of the sightlines for much of the audience.

But these flaws pale against the potency of the struggle between Blanche and Stanley, the cultured but weak against the crass but strong, and how Stella finds herself trying, and failing, to negotiate a peace.