‘A StreetCar Named Desire’ is haunted by Brando and Ghosts of Actors in the past

“John Garfield should do this part, not me.”

This self-doubt declaration was murmured by an unkempt, largely un triedated 23-year-old actor at the first table. The year was in 1947; the setting, a rehearsal room on the roof in the west 42nd street; And the piece after some fluctuations about what the title should be: “A street car named Desire”. His author: Tennessee Williams.

As for this apparently unsafe young actor who had heard that his role had already been rejected by the film of the working class, John Garfield? His name was Marlon Brando. His raw, eloquently unarmed, subsequent representation of a sexual magnetic blue-collar loout named Stanley Kowalski role, which he not only make him a star on this day, but also help to change the nature of American acting.

Brando may once have the feeling that he was caught in Garfield in the brooding shadow. But that was nothing compared to the performance of Shadow Brando – which was captured for eternity in the film adaptation of “Streetcar” from 1951, which was staged like the piece by Elia Kazan – about every actor who dared to present Stanley Kowalski in the coming years.

The latest of this brave breed is Paul Mescal, who attracted Stanley’s historical T-shirt for the production of “Streetcar” Rebecca Frecknall by Stanley, born in London, which runs at the Brooklyn Academy of Music until April 6th. Initially, some doubts were expressed under Star Watchers about the casting of Mescal, which had become an international heartbeat after he was published in the television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s “Normal People”. Wasn’t he too sensitive, too slim, too young to play Stanley? (No matter that he was actually a bit older than Brando on Broadway.)

When this latest “Streetcar” was opened in London, critics kept a pleased sigh of relief. The interpretation of Frecknall, known for their top -class approaches for classics (including the “cabaret” on Broadway), is unorthodox, but convincing, they said. The casting of Patsy Ferran, a replacement for an injured actress, was crushed as a heroine of the piece of Blanche Dubois, whose fragile illusions by Stanley, her brutal brother -in -law. The general reaction to Mescal was summarized by Andrzej Lukowski’s review in London’s time -out: “He is good! Actually very good. (Also: stacked.) ”(While Jesse Green admired the stars of the play in his New York Times Review, production in Brooklyn was less enthusiastic.)

Certainly, no American drama is also haunted by ghosts of actors as a “tram”. By that I mean not only Brando, but also Vivien Leigh in the film as a blanche (a part that comes on stage from Jessica Tandy). Leigh’s interpretation was described by Pauline Kael as “one of these rare performances, of which they can really be said that they cause pity and terror”.

By the way, the picture of Brando in his torn T-shirt, the “Stelllla!” (Stanley’s wife’s name) may have become a mem before there was meme. But it is the blanches that generally received most of the praise and analysis of critics. In Brook’s Atkinson’s review from 1947 in The Times it was tandy to which he dedicated a long paragraph of the lyrical description. (Brando was cited as one of three actors who “act not only with color and style, but also with insight”.)

It was Tandy who won a Tony Award next year, while Brando was not even nominated. Leigh, but not Brando, won an Oscar for the film.

Although “Streetcar” is considered the largest American dramas by many (including me), the revival of it has been sparse for several decades, perhaps due to the continued use of the film on the public imagination. (In the 1950s there were two very short engagements in the New York City Center.) In 1973 “Streetcar” received a Broadway resuscitation with Rosemary Harris and James Farentino, who reminded the New York audience of his unusual craft and power. After that, new productions arrived quickly, with a shining selection of stars brought the war between Blanche, the fluttering fantasy and Stanley, the hard pragmatist, in a shabby apartment in New Orleans with their constantly changing power balances between the characters and the actors.

What follows is a commented list of some of the Blanches and Stanleys who had life, which Williams described in a letter to his agent before opening the play as a “tragedy of misunderstandings”.

Los Angeles, 1973

Faye Dunaway and Jon Voight

Dunaway is said to be an unusually glamorous blanche, but also “exciting, original” and unexpectedly funny, wrote Stephen Farber in the Times. Her co-star rose less easily: “Brando would be hopeless, but Vohights hardworking attempt to accommodate the role is almost as catastrophic.”

Broadway, 1988

Blythe Danner and Aidan Quinn

Although Frank Rich the Times believed that Danner should have been a natural talent for Blanche, he wrote that she all too often went back to a “Fey eccentricity” that is more appropriate for Noël Coward. He added that Danner and Quinn, “both erotic figures under other circumstances, do not throw sparks here”.

Broadway, 1992

Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin

In this case, according to Rich, who wrote about Baldwin: “His Stanley is the first thing I saw was that a longing for Mr. Brando does not leave and filled the piece with” The America of Big Schulered Urban Industrialism “. Rich wrote from Lange: “The real problem with her blanche is less a question of poor stage experience than emotional shyness.”

In the first “tram” that I checked for the Times, the theater demolitionist Ivo van Hove set a large part of his experimental attitude in a bathtub. Everyone was naked, everyone was soaked – presumably with the aim of pulling poses and demands away. McKenzies “Scrawny, Charisma-Free” Stanley did not survive the immersion, I wrote. (Although it was a kind of scream to hear an immortal line that was delivered as “Stella! … glug, glug, glug … stella!”, But even moist, Marvel provided “a performance of remarkable attitude and endurance, which also localized the tragic, self -destructed conflict in Blanche in Blanche.”

London, 2002

Glenn Close and Iain Glen

Close brought Blanche an “unusual force” and “gymnastic strength”, I wrote at the time, while the smooth glen only seemed to be “coarseness”. When Stanley Blanche ranked into bed in the notorious rape scene of the piece: “It is difficult to understand why she doesn’t just rush him.”

Washington, DC, 2004

Patricia Clarkson and Adam Rothenberg

The beguilingly demanding Clarkson brought her trademark and wryess to Blanche, who performed as a calculation -enforced strategist and artist instead of a tragic heroine. Rothenberg was an unexpectedly youthful Stanley. “While you may think that a boyish Stanley fits the perfect game with Ms. Clarkson’s chicken-hawkish blanche,” I stated that “there is only a weak sexual current between them.”

Broadway, 2005

Natasha Richardson and John C. Reilly

A profound disappointment. After Richardson in “Cabaret” won a Tony as a life injured, sexually insatiable Sally Bowles in “Cabaret”, he felt like an exciting choice for blanche. But for the most part, she seemed to be good health and self -confidence and rarely vulnerable. Von Reilly found my criticism: “You can feel a real person under the striker. Imagine Karl Malden plays Ralph Kramden in ‘The Honeymooners’.

A highlight of my theater life. The production of Liv Ullmann firmly restored to the center of “Streetcar” and Blanchett – an actress that always contains a variety – found every contradictory element of broken self as well as a burning vitality. “What Ms. Blanchett brings in character is life itself, an original instinct that stops her at her feet long after she was shaped by strokes that would make up a heavyweight boxer.” This converted her encounter with Edgerton Stanley, a figure of violent and youthful strength, into a fascinating price war.

London, 2009

Rachel Weisz and Elliot Cowan

I deeply regret that I had missed Weisz ‘Olivier-prize-crowned blanche who was agreed to be a figure of a horny, melting contradictions. Matt Wolf wrote in the Times: “She is unique among the blanchions that I can reign when communicating the full weight of the delusional Mississippian need to achieve a performance.” Cowan was obviously okay like Stanley and with his Polish/southern accent.

The first black “Streetcar”, which is staged on Broadway, appeared for me as a “lively, self -confident girl who was used to manipulating others with her female Wiles, during Underwood’s Stanley” as an average revised husband, understandably with this sister -in -law, with this swing in the swarms of his bath “. They radiated the lightness that they associate with actors in long -term television series, for which Banter has become the second nature. “

Brooklyn, 2016

Gillian Anderson and Ben Foster

Benedict Andrews ‘strict, cold-eyed, modernized production presented the war between the in-laws as a Brutal Darwinian struggle, which produced the proto-feminist elements in Williams’ piece. Although the approach of his poems is largely downhill for me, it was very effective. “MS. Anderson represents Blanche with a self -preserving skepticism that begins to lose its edge.” As for Foster’s “effortlessly natural Stanley”, he called “the worker of the working class, who says he votes for Donald Trump because he wants America to be strong again.”

When I put together this list, I became newly aware of how carefully the balance between Blanche and Stanley must be if the piece should completely include us. In order for a “tram” to have a dramatic tension, it requires both an erotic chemistry between their lines and the feeling that its result is not predetermined until the end – that its fighters agree evenly for a while.

It is proof of the secrets of the casting that so many of the stars presented here that the class did not look so good on paper. Brando himself writes in his autobiography that he fought wrongly in Broadway production by “Streetcar” “Jessica and I, and between us we threw the game out of balance.” And when it comes to the role of which it will be identified forever, he said: “I was the antithesis of Stanley Kowalski. I was naturally sensitive and he was rough. “