newjerseynewsroom.com

BY PAULA SCHWARTZ

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

After the opening night performance of “A Streetcar Named Desire” Sunday night – and after dolefully checking out the yacht-sized limos parked outside the theater - we hoofed it four blocks in the fierce rain to the after party at the Copacabana. At the door someone handed us a garland of Mardi Gras Beads and we walked into what looked like the French Quarter of New Orleans where “Streetcar” is set. It was a perfect setting for the glitzy, glittering affair.

There was plenty of bourbon and plenty of space at the bar. While waiters passed out fried crawfish, boudin balls, deep-fried crabs and bread pudding, everyone kept an eye on the door. Broadway opening parties are all about the stars, and the higher their names on the playbill the later they usually arrive, but the party can’t get started before the celebrity wattage arrives.

While we waited for Blair Underwood who stars as Stanley, Daphne Rubin-Vega (Stella), Nicole Ari Parker (Blanche), and Wood Harris, who plays Blanche’s suitor Mitch, we glimpsed producer Stephen Byrd and director Emily Mann, who were in a crush of well wishers.

The multi-racial revival of “Streetcar” is the brainchild of Mr. Byrd, who had a huge success in 2008 with “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof,” which also featured black actors. We asked Mr. Byrd what inspired him? “You look at ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Who doesn’t know someone in the family that’s dysfunctional? If you look at this play, here’s a guy who all he wanted to do was go bowling, play cards with his buddies, drink beer. He was happily married, and here comes this crazy lady who overstayed her stay.” He added, “Those stories translate very well, and New Orleans is a gumbo. That’s what we tried to reflect with this multi-racial cast.”

Mr. Byrd said Blair Underwood was perfect for Stanley even though he wasn’t the obvious choice. “People underestimated Blair,” he said. “He’s always been a soft guy, but he dug down deep for that role to bring out a vicious, brutish side.”

Emily Mann reminisced about first meeting Tennessee Williams when she was 27. She’d directed a well-received production of “The Glass Menagerie” at the Guthrie, and the playwright called her up to meet for drinks. “We got very, very drunk that night and he ended up in my arms sobbing, saying, ‘Miss Emily, I love you because you understand my mother, and if you understand my mother dear, you understand me.’’

The playwright also told her how unhappy he was with the movie version of “Streetcar,” where audiences would cheer Stanley and laugh at Blanche. “It was one of the great sorrows of his life, that in a way how brilliant, as he called him Marlon was, got in the way. It stole the play from Blanche. It’s Blanche’s play and he wanted you to feel for a woman, who is a sensitive, tender, artistic person and that the bullies, and the mediocre people and the brutes destroy the tender people and she was one.”