A Streetcar Named Desire

Some people feel that the modern American theater is experiencing a crisis in the area of playwriting but, when you think about it, the number of worthy scripts being produced these days is far from small. I would submit that, as far as the art of theater (rather than the business of it) is concerned, our biggest worry is in the area of direction, and a case in point is the production of A Streetcar Named Desire that’s now being presented as part of the “Tennessee Williams Explored” series at the Kennedy Center. The dispiriting news is that the play has been so badly staged by Garry Hynes that anyone who sees it here for the first time might find it hard to understand why it’s universally recognized as a true classic.

Hynes was the first female director to win a Tony Award, in 1998; she earned the prize for her excellent work on Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane. This season, however, she came a cropper with Eliam Kraiem’s admittedly problematic Sixteen Wounded, and now she seems to be clueless about Streetcar. The harshest view of the situation is that Beauty Queen was a lucky fluke for someone who really hasn’t got the goods; a more charitable assessment is that Hynes can do a fine job when handed a specific type of material but simply doesn’t have the stylistic range that any first-rank director must possess.

A Streetcar Named Desire is full of pitfalls for those who revive it — pitfalls over and above the fact that iconic performances of the play’s four central roles were given by Marlon Brando (in the original Broadway production and the film version), Vivien Leigh (on screen), Jessica Tandy (on stage), and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden (on stage and screen). The story of Blanche DuBois, an aging, mentally unstable, alcoholic, destitute Southern belle who comes to New Orleans and interferes in the lives of her younger sister Stella and Stella’s brutish but sexually magnetic husband Stanley Kowalski, Streetcar is a tragedy with quite a few laughs. From a present-day perspective, several scenes in this play about an interloping in-law can seem almost as if they belong in a TV sitcom. In his later years, Williams was known to describe Streetcar as a comedy and he reportedly disrupted a performance of a revival by laughing almost all the way through it; of course, he was pretty far gone by that time, but the point is that top-drawer acting and direction is required to achieve the right shifts of tone in a work of tremendous complexity.

Hynes and two of the production’s leading players, Patricia Clarkson as Blanche and Adam Rothenberg as Stanley, are unequal to that task. Though Clarkson has given fine performances in many other roles, she seems miscast and uncomfortable in this one. To begin with, her voice is all wrong for the part: in pitch, inflection, and accent, she sounds more like a New England girl than a daughter of the South. Even more damagingly, Clarkson seems far too self-possessed as Blanche; there’s little evidence that this woman is rapidly approaching the end of her rope. Equally miscast both vocally and temperamentally is Rothenberg, who lacks the menace that any Stanley must exude and is also the wrong kind of sexy. (As my theater companion put it, “He reminds me of one of those cute, in-shape, young Jewish guys you see having brunch on the Upper West Side.”)

Additionally, Clarkson and Rothenberg have no chemistry with each other and they either experience major trouble with or simply skip over many of the characters’ emotional transitions, apparently having received little or no help from their director. Streetcar is one of the those plays in which people can be alternately laughing, crying, and screaming with anger in the space of a single scene. When not played properly, such seismic shifts in emotion can seem like they come out of nowhere — and that happens countless times in this production. To cite only one example: Stanley’s violent outburst in the penultimate scene of Act I, and the other characters’ reaction to it, is unconvincing because it’s so poorly acted and so ineptly staged.

Amy Ryan as Stella and Noah Emmerich as Mitch have a much better handle on their far less tricky roles but they, too, suffer from the lack of a strong directorial hand. The most satisfying performance in this production is given by Amy McWilliams in the small role of Stella’s neighbor Eunice Hubbell, even though a considerable percentage of that performance happens off-stage. This brings us to another major, unexpected flaw of the Kennedy Center’s Streetcar: It features what must be the only poorly designed set ever to come from the great John Lee Beatty, so far off the mark that it’s almost impossible to believe he’s really responsible for it. The biggest problem is that the Kowalskis’ apartment takes up the entire length and height of the stage. As a result, scenes meant to played outside are either seen at a far remove from the audience through two barred windows on the upstage wall of the set or are not seen at all, only heard.

There are other design problems here of the type that would be expected from a rank tyro but not from a Tony Award winner. The open door to the apartment blocks some key action in the kitchen — e.g., Blanche’s desperate search for liquor in Act I, Scene One — from the view of much of the audience seated house left. And the fact that the kitchen area is split-level results in some very awkward staging, as in the pivotal scene where Blanche seduces a young newspaper boy played by Joshua Skidmore. (This is yet another scene in which Clarkson doesn’t really seem to understand what’s going on in Blanche’s head.)

By the way, one of Hynes’s less-than-brilliant ways of dealing with the set’s restrictions is to have Stanley shimmy up a pole in the apartment for the famous “STELLA!!!” bit. The King Kong-like image is apt and yet the staging is counterproductive because the audience is left to wonder, “Why in heaven’s name would the guy climb a pole in his apartment and scream for his wife rather than running outside to try to collect her from the apartment upstairs?”

Aside from the set, the design elements of the show are solid, including Howell Binkley’s lighting and Jane Greenwood’s costumes. But the laudable aspects of this Streetcar seem insignificant in the context of one of the most disappointing productions of a classic that I’ve ever seen presented in such a high-profile venue. There are some brilliantly gifted directors working in the theater these days, chief among them Broadway’s Daniel Sullivan and Jack O’Brien and D.C.’s own Michael Kahn and Eric Schaeffer, but it’s doubtful that Garry Hynes will ever join that august group.

Word has recently come that Natasha Richardson will be starring in a revival of this challenging play on Broadway next season. Here’s hoping that it turns out much better than this one.