An ingenious take powered by four ace performances: QUENTIN LETTS first night review of A Streetcar Named Desire

By Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail

Published: 19:56 EST, 28 July 2014 | Updated: 19:56 EST, 28 July 2014

A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams (Young Vic)

Rating: Rating:

There is a moment near the end of Gillian Anderson’s fine performance as poor, drink-addled Blanche DuBois when she rises from very good to top-rate.

The problem with this slightly impressionable production is that, owing to the revolving stage, only part of the audience will see it.

For much of this 1947 stage classic, Blanche has tried to maintain a front of disintegrating allure and pretence.

To this end, Miss Anderson makes the most of her hooded, bedroomish eyes – at times she could almost be Jerry Hall’s younger, shorter sister.

But finally Blanche realises that she is going to be taken away for psychiatric care.

In that instant those eyes create a V-frown of crumbling realisation – that the game is up, in part, but also that the burden of her fantasy life is about to be lifted. Director Benedict Andrews’s decision to stage it in the 21st century has dividends but, I think, one grave flaw.

The plus points are immediacy, freshness, fashionable zing. And so there is a cordless telephone (the stuff about telegrams has to be slightly swallowed); Blanche arrives in New Orleans to visit her sister Stella (Vanessa Kirby) dragging designer luggage with wheels; modern jazz saxophone sets a sexy mood.

We can see the three toothbrushes in the bathroom – one too many for sanity in a studio flat. Miss Anderson’s is not the only great performance. Miss Kirby is remarkably natural.

Ben Foster is chillingly thuggish as Blanche’s coarse brother-in-law Stanley. Corey Johnson’s Mitch, the man who falls in love with Blanche, is sweet and bulky and just as he should be.

The flaw? This play is about the shrivelling of old manners. When set in the 1940s, just after war, this is easy to credit.

But in 2014 have we not so lost sight of the sort of gentility to which Blanche clings as to make her implausible? 

Director Andrews slightly loses his nerve at the end.

The doctor who comes to take away Blanche wears 1940s hat and clothes.

Today, might ‘he’ not in fact be a ‘she’, and dress informally?

Stanley and Stella’s apartment is a minimalist affair with lots of steel and white surfaces.

This, again, shouts ‘today’ – spot the baby bottles which replace the bourbon bottles. Some of the sightlines at crucial moments are dreadful, though.

The price for this modern, fan-cooled flat is an absence of the claustrophobia – the sheer Louisiana heat – which can come with more conventional settings.

Final pernickety point. Stanley and his poker mates drink Bud Light and Coors Light. The red-necks I’ve known would never touch such airy-fairy beers. Old Milwaukee, surely.

Generally, though, an ingenious take powered by four ace performances, with an A star for X-Files’ Anderson.