You don't see Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire produced very often because it is almost impossible to cast. (ReadThe New York Times' Ben Brantley on the 2005 New York production with John C. Reilly.) After all these years, it still needs an actor who will make you not think about Marlon Brando, who played the brutish Stanley Kowalski on Broadway in 1947 and in the 1951 movie. More importantly, it requires a mesmerizing actress who can convincingly play the tragically charming Blanche DuBois, which may be the best role ever written for a woman by an American playwright. Luckily, Barrington Stage Company artistic director Julianne Boyd found three-time Tony nominee Marin Mazzie (left) to play Blanche. Within the play's first ten minutes, Mazzie has the audience spellbound, and she rides the role at full gallop, taking us along on her doomed, achingly poetic journey. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Streetcar is more than an exquisitely written and atmospheric period piece set in working class New Orleans, which chronicles class consciousness and unconsciousness in the deep south in 1947. It is also a play so raw and primal that it feels like it could have been written last week. It has an honesty you don't find in many contemporary plays that attempt to deal with sexuality in a more stripped down and confrontational fashion. It depicts "brutal desire," to use Blanche's term, with chilling candor.
As Stanley, Christopher Innvar looks surprisingly brawny in his sleeveless "wife beater" T-shirt. He conveys the erotic charge between Stanley and his tormentor, Blanche, and his wife, Stella, who is played with agility and delicacy by Kim Stauffer. Innvar manages to be threatening, nasty, and sympathetic. When he quotes Huey Long—"Every man is a King"—you comprehend Stanley's intense pain at being ridiculed under his own roof. Brian Prather's deconstructed set is moody and transporting, and the live musical passages that have been inserted between scenes evoke the steamy aura of New Orleans. But, ultimately, it is Mazzie's make-or-break performance as Blanche DuBois that gives the evening its power and poignancy. There are moments when you understand why Blanche has been the role model for generations of drag queens ("I have always depended on the kindness of strangers," and all that), but Mazzie pulls in the reins before ever letting her Blanche go over the top. She's the quintessential southern belle—riveting, ravishing, and ravished. You never forget that she is a human being beneath her affectations, and Mazzie makes her heartbreaking. A Streetcar Named Desire (through August 29) was a big gamble for Boyd, and she aced it. As a follow up to the first two Main Stage productions, Carousel and Sleuth, Streetcar has made the summer of 2009 a championship season for Barrington Stage Company.
