Sixty years after it won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, the virtues of Tennessee Williams' well-constructed and deeply complex A Streetcar Named Desire resonate more than ever, and The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's production, starring Laila Robins as Blanche DuBois and Gregory Derelian as Stanley Kowalski, does justice to Williams' brilliant work.

Unlike in so many of today's plays, Williams' characters show us who they are in speeches born of need, given to another character onstage, rather than by stepping downstage and delivering a lyric monologue. Moreover, each characterization contains depth, nuance and history. And part of Williams' great achievement is that there are victims [...]