A Streetcar Named Desire
Opening Night: May 1, 2016
Closing: June 4, 2016
Theater: St. Ann's Warehouse
Arguably, St. Ann’s Warehouse is the only NY theater capable of staging Benedict Andrews’ maverick production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” featuring Gillian Anderson, Ben Foster, Corey Johnson and Vanessa Kirby. With its transparent, revolving set, all conversations are overheard, there’s nowhere to hide and the ensuing tragedy purposefully spins toward its inevitable last line. The New York Times called the production “a wounding portrait of communal loss.”
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May 1, 2016
It really is a jungle out there, Blanche, that same cruel, do-or-die world described by Darwin. And while it’s noble of you to plead with your sister not to “hang back with the brutes” — to choose the aesthetes over the animals — you surely know it’s a waste of breath. The New Orleans neighborhood where Blanche DuBois comes calling so disastrously in Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” has never seemed quite as atavistic as it does in Benedict Andrews’s compellingly harsh revival, which opened on Sunday night at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. This production pits a fully adrenalized Gillian Anderson, as Blanche, against Ben Foster, as her adversarial brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, in a riveting study of the survival of the fittest. Even if you are unfamiliar with the plot, you shouldn’t have trouble predicting its outcome. Mr. Foster’s slyly commanding Stanley — a performance that makes the specter of Marlon Brando, who created the part, temporarily retreat into the dusk — is obviously the younger, stronger and more confident of the two. But Ms. Anderson’s Blanche has her own arsenal of weapons, and though they may be outdated, she puts up a vigorous defense. This fading feline beauty is clearly fated to lose, but she’s also going down fighting, tooth and manicured nail.
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