In the beginning of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Blanche DuBois arrives at her sister Stella Kowalski’s house on Elysian Fields Avenue via the Desire streetcar line. But the wild ride is only beginning.
“We’re bringing Blanche’s circus of tragedies and woes and mania alive on stage,” says Augustin J. Correro, co-artistic director of the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans. “She comes to New Orleans to escape her vices and to start a new life, but like a moth to the flame, she ends up being in the worst place if you’re sexually repressed and an alcoholic.”
The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company is presenting the show July 18-Aug. 4 at the Marigny Opera House, which sits on the former Desire streetcar line.
In the drama, Blanche and Stanley and Stella Kowalski’s lives collide. Blanche has arrived from Laurel, Mississippi, where the family estate, Belle Reve, is. Stanley and Stella have settled into their married lives and are expecting a child. They live in a modest apartment, but Blanche squeezes into their tight quarters, though it’s not clear for how long.
“Streetcar” debuted on Broadway in 1947 and several stars won Oscars for the film adaptation that soon followed. Although the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company just announced its 10th season schedule, it waited this long to mount “Streetcar.” (It staged a parody version in 2022.)
The company wanted to have the resources before taking on the classic drama, Correro says. It made sense to start with plays with smaller casts and less in the way of high expectations, he adds.
Correro also has published a book on Williams and his plays, and the company has some advantages of knowing the city where the drama is set.
'The last frontier of Bohemia.'
The play normally calls for the set to include the Kowalskis’ apartment’s two main rooms. They’re doing that and also including the bathtub Blanche soaks in.
Williams took some license with geography. His Laurel is fictionalized, and though the Kowalski apartment is on Elysian Fields, Williams refers to it as being in the French Quarter.
The Tennessee Williams company is situating the apartment in another way they see Williams’ New Orleans. There are bars on both sides of the home.
“I studied Williams’ books and journals and his letters,” Correro says. “What gave him impressions of New Orleans is stuff you can still experience today and what you can get walking around the Quarter and seeing the (street) characters and what types of establishments are next to residential homes.”
The front and rear of the stage will suggest bars and nightlife, and that’s meant to amplify the tensions.
“The intrusive noise of bars and nightclubs is on either side of Blanche,” he says. “Her vices have not only followed her here, they’re squishing her on either side.”
The now-famous streetcar line ran for more than 25 years.
Blanche is one of Williams’ signature characters, but Stanley and Stella are no slouches. Stanley is a man of simple tastes, but also an impassioned brute. Stella doesn’t just put up with that side, she loves him for it.
“She left Belle Reve on purpose,” Correro says. “She came to a place that is so different. When Stanley went around smashing lightbulbs with his shoe on their wedding night, she was excited by it. There’s an excitement to breaking the rules that she has.”
Correro is trying to dig into the raw elements of the relationships and psychology of the play, including all the unspoken tensions.
“Streetcar” is the highlight of a season with the theme of desire. It concludes with “Penny Dreadfuls: The Remarkable Rooming-House of Madame Le Monde” in September.
Tickets for “A Streetcar Named Desire” are $40 via twtheatrenola.com.
Keep up with the latest at calendar.gambitweekly.com.