Cate Blanchett takes a slow ‘Streetcar’ to Brooklyn

Liv Ullman directs Sydney Theatre Company in Tennessee Williams classic

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

What actresses have you seen play the great role of Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire"?

There's Vivien Leigh, of course, so luminous in the film. Few are still around who remember Jessica Tandy's original in 1947. Theater lore whispers that Tallulah Bankhead's performance at City Center in 1955 was so mad that not only was every viewer instantly struck gay but so were the ushers, the stagehands and, on Tallulah's best nights, people passing along on the sidewalk.

Mine include Blythe Danner (1988), Jessica Lange (1992) and New York Theatre Workshop's wild staging by Ivo van Hove with Elizabeth Marvel fondly recalled as the "bathtub Blanche" (1999). My last Blanche was the late Natasha Richardson in Roundabout's 2005 revival — luminous as ever, but still a strapping lady who looked like she could easily deck John C. Reilly's runty Stanley Kowalski.

Now Cate Blanchett arrives as Blanche in the Sydney Theatre Company's rendition of Tennessee Williams' classic drama of the butterfly and the brute. On view at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater through Dec. 20, the show has been directed by no less than Liv Ullmann.

The production opens with a silent vignette of Blanche, apparently rattling along in that streetcar to her fatal destination. Her eyes are closed but her lips seem to move as if rehearsing what she is going to tell sister Stella about their lost family estate.

The blond, willowy Blanchett portrays Blanche as a harried creature unsuccessfully camouflaging her desperation in heavy makeup, gauzy frocks and sinuous gestures. Fluttering around the Kowalskis' ratty one-room abode, this flashy, spasmodically elegant Blanche suggests a tattered, tired flamingo trapped in a pig-sty.

The shock of her new, squalid surroundings — dirty hot-pink walls, sparse furnishings, no privacy — shakes Blanche badly but she mostly manages to cling to her artificial gentility for awhile. Joel Edgerton's pugnacious, gum-chewing, low-life of a Stanley obviously dislikes Blanche on first sight as an intruder and then as a threat to his marriage to Stella.

His taunting and soon brutal behavior takes their toll on Blanche's psyche, which is further undermined by her excessive drinking. Steeped in liquor, Blanche increasingly becomes so lost in sorrowful reveries that her climactic face-off with Stanley ends not with a bang but in whimpering submission.

Sweet Southern tones at times dropping into a lower register to convey emotion, Blanchett effectively presents a frail, theatrical Blanche wincing from the daylight of reality. Beneath the tinsel of Blanche's disguise, Blanchett reveals telling glimpses of the character's abiding pain and growing exhaustion.

Blanchett's deep, complex performance is pretty much the whole show here, as there's not much to report about the remainder of the company. Edgerton is simply nasty as Stanley. Robin McLeavy is a soft, unassertive Stella. Tim Richards plays Mitch as a doughy nobody.

Making her U.S. debut as a director, Ullmann underlines the drama perhaps too forcefully with bluesy music, metallic sound effects and generally harsh lighting. The train that occasionally passes by the apartment practically rocks the walls. Just like the soiled Henley and dungarees that Stanley wears (I thought the guy was supposed to be in sales, not a grease monkey), the Kowalski establishment looks unusually sordid and lacks totally the raffish charm associated with New Orleans.

Lingering long over certain moments, Ullmann's staging moves the play along very slowly, so this three hour-plus "Streetcar" ride may seem to go on forever to folks who have travelled that way before. Still, Williams' great play remains absorbing and Blanchett is admirable. If anybody likes to collect Blanches, here's a fancy one for your glass menagerie.

"A Streetcar Named Desire" continues through Dec. 20 at the Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn. Call (718) 636-4100 or visit www.bam.org.