A Streetcar Named Desire
Gatehouse Theatre, London

Brendan Rimmer

This production staged by the Tower Theatre Company can at best be described as a faithful rendering of the play.

The whole thing is just obstinately average from start to finish, with none of the characters ever really managing to engage the audience. This lack of engagement is further hindered by Rosalind Moore's Stella slipping every now from a New Orleans accent into a Northern English one, so much so that one begins to suspect that she like her sister might be 'a little touched'.

The one character who really succeeds in at least engaging the audience is Blanche DuBois played by Clarisse East, who manages sometimes to generate a sense of pity, while in other moments kindling hatred for her supercilious attitude toward her sister. While the character of Stanley (Richard Thornton) is suitably angry and mean throughout the production, what he and Blanche singularly fail to do is provide any chemistry of any sort between them.

Stanley comes in from playing sport and is changing his shirt with Blanche looking on, but there is no sense of desire or perhaps even revulsion, there is only indifference - which does not make for the most fascinating of spectacles. This indifference is caused by each of the characters seeming to concentrate on playing their own roles correctly, but never making the effort to engage with each other and create the raw human friction that is pivotal to the successful portrayal of a subtle dramatic piece such as Streetcar.

So much so, that when Stanley eventually rapes her, there is no sense that this is the final act in a long running relationship of desire and hatred that has been slow-burning throughout the play. Instead it is a complete shock, not only to the audience, but also the actors judging by the lack of emotional commitment during the scene.

This impression is further hardened when the next day there seem to be no consequences and no visible change in the characters' relationships with each other, until Blanche is taken away to the insane asylum. (At which point Stella remembers that she is supposed to be upset and lets out a pitiful scream which mercifully brings the curtain down on this mediocre performance.)

The lack of dramatic commitment by the cast can perhaps be put down to the lack of any definite vision from the director Julie Dark. It just does not seem as though there was any particular reason or dramatic vision behind the staging. The net result is that Tennessee Williams' play exploring how disparate characters come together by force of circumstance, and the fine line that exists between love and hate, becomes a series of technically well played but workmanlike scenes.

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