BWW Reviews: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE at Boiler Room Theatre

Directed with confidence by Corbin Green (who telegraphs his focused vision for the piece throughout the production) and acted with grace, style and alacrity by a superb ensemble of actors, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, now onstage at Boiler Room Theatre, may well be the most satisfying production ever presented by BRT.  

In the year in which theater-goers the world over are celebrating the centenary of Williams' birth, and in which Nashville-area audiences have already been treated to Studio Tenn's sterling The Glass Menagerie and ACT 1's laudable The Night of the Iguana, BRT's Streetcar perfectly captures the tone and musicality of William's exquisitely written script, propelling the professional theater company to its zenith in its 11^th season. Yet this Streetcar is no homogenized version filled with palatable pablum for the masses, rather it's a gritty, realistic depiction of the horrors and brutalities of the lives led by the people in the play who serve as the playwright's mouthpieces for the sometimes horrific, oftentimes moving and always intriguing story he seeks to convey in this stunning work for the theater.

Considered by many to be the true masterpiece among Williams' opus of works focusing on the frayed edges of Southern gentility and the decaying social hierarchies that existed in the South for generations, A Streetcar Named Desire is a fiery mix of "regret and recriminations" forged with the steely resolve of a decadent society moving headlong into a future of redefined gender, racial and class roles.

As the play's plot reveals itself at a languid pace reminiscent of life in the Mississippi Delta, theater-goers are certain to find themselves intimately and inextricably involved in the action, thanks to the assembled artistry on display.

Any recounting of that plot seems redundant and perhaps nonsensical, so much a part of the American literary culture is A Streetcar Named Desire. Williams' recollection of life in the French Quarter in post-World War II New Orleans is so evocative - that atmosphere (a fascinating blend of color and sound) so vividly captured in the script and in the certitude of Williams' complete and thorough depiction of the era, the setting and, most importantly, the characters - that it is virtually guaranteed that Streetcar will always be a vibrant part of the theater, inspiring actors, directors, playwrights (all theatrical artisans, for that matter) for centuries to come.

Led by the heartbreakingly real, while altogether ethereal and dreamlike, performance of Corrie Miller as the iconic Blanche DuBois, Green's cast is revelatory, each individual actor delivering a finely-etched portrayal that underscores the pathos and the humor inherent in these people who are so indelibly carved into the pantheon of fictional Southern Gothic characters. Playing opposite Miller as the loutish brute Stanley Kowalski is Nashville theater newcomer Travis Scott Brazil, who defies all the preconceived notions of how the character should be played, to create his own incisive and riveting turn in the role. At the nexus of the triangle that so significantly figures at the center of the play's beautifully crafted plot, Evelyn O'Neal Brush gives us a freshly nuanced -and perhaps unparalleled - reading of Stella Kowalski (nee DuBois, in the tradition of marriage announcements that have filled Southern newspapers for time in memoriam) that helps to explain her blind devotion to Stanley, as well as her coddling of her older sister. The three actors engage in a stunningly crafted pas de trois that is at once erotic and terrifying, underscored by a beleaguered acceptance of the harshly encroaching reality found amid the stately remains of the South's genteel - and alternately reviled and respected - past.

Miller's Blanche is enigmatic and flighty, her cultured Mississippi Delta accent dripping from her lips like so much dew from a magnolia blossom cradled in the trees that shade the veranda at Belle Reve, yet her flights of fancy are underscored by a very real sense of ennui and that rather dazed and palpable feeling of sheer terror that informs every one of Blanche's stilted actions. However, Miller ably skirts stereotype, to refrain from playing Blanche as a mere repeat of Vivien Leigh's film portrayal of the character (which is, no doubt, the most memorable in our recollection), in order to convey a woman coming unhinged amid the forces of a world she fails to adequately comprehend. To witness her slow descent into the mania that pervades Blanche's existence and to watch her interactions with the play's other characters is to see nothing short of brilliance. Miller's scene with Chris Goodrich, as the "young collector" for The Evening Star (even the newspaper's name itself sounds lyrical, offering a more romantic and poetic vision of the frankly coarse New Orleans of the play), is beautifully played, with Goodrich properly providing the foil for Miller's overtly sexual advances, evoking images of Blanche's unseen, but easily comprehended, dead young poet who was her husband for such a short and tragic span of time.

Perhaps most compelling - and just as startling as any of the others on display - are Miller's scenes with Corey Caldwell, who gives such a heartrendingly genuine performance as Harold "Mitch" Mitchell, the common working man whose courtly manner belies his station in life and who pursues Blanche with the fervent hope that he will not be left alone in the world. The chemistry between Miller and Caldwell serves the script perfectly, their initial moments together capturing the grace of the world that Blanche clings to, while ensuring that the ultimately more dramatic conclusion of their time together is emotionally draining and compelling. Caldwell's portrayal of Mitch is splendidly delivered.

The poetic romance, however halting it may be, of Blanche and Mitch's courtship is presented in counterpoint to the erotic and animalistic dynamic of the relationship between Stanley and Stella. Certainly, Stella (so exquisitely played by Brush) recognizes that her husband comes from a lower station than she (after all, Stella's a product of the same plantation society that spawned Blanche), but she is drawn to him by the sheer sexual need that is so much a part of both characters. Brazil's Stanley is loud and obnoxious, but there's still the sense of the clever and attractive boy beneath his harsh veneer - plus the heady realization that what transpires between Stanley and Stella is white-hot in its intensity - that makes Stanley more accessible to audiences and Stella's devotion to him more easily accepted.

Brazil plays Stanley with a menacing presence that makes the play's denouement both shocking and completely expected, while Brush gives as good as she gets throughout the three hour play, adding to the script-bound psychology of the complexity of their relationship. As a result, the iconic scene in which a recalcitrant Stanley bellows from the street for his "baby, [his] Stella" to come to him is as shattering and as nakedly sexual as anything ever written for the stage. While Brazil and Brush dance a very sordid tango of sex and lust, there is something there that also seems rather poetic and romantic (and which makes Stanley's ultimate betrayal of Stella's trust all the more distressing and unsettling).

Conversely, Miller and Brazil dance around each other tentatively as their characters approach each other like two prize-fighters sizing up the competition, eventually coming together in a vicious and upsetting scene in which Stanley claims his ultimate power over his sister-in-law. As Blanche retreats to her shadowy world of too-pretty young men dancing through the violet-scented air of the Moon Lake Casino (to that world also inhabited by Williams' other, equally famous faded Southern belle Amanda Wingfield), we are plunged headlong into director Green's terrifyingly real depiction of Stanley's brutal rape of her. This is not the culmination of repressed lust and desire, as might be surmised by a cursory consideration of the script, but rather a savage attempt by Stanley to exact his final revenge - to claim total dominance - on his despised sister-in-law. That scene is so vividly rendered by Miller and Brazil (both of whom are so extraordinarily gifted in the way they present those truly terrifying moments onstage) that it will be forever seared into your own psyche after seeing it on the Boiler Room stage.

The scene that follows, in which Stella admits that she cannot believe her sister's story if she intends to stay with her husband (who despite his rape of Blanche remains Stella's romantic and sexual partner) and in which Blanche prepares to leave on what she perceives to be a holiday in the country, but which is in reality commitment to a sanitarium, is just as dramatic in my recollection of it as it was when I saw it onstage. To admit that I stifled sobs as Blanche is wrestled to the floor by the nurse (superbly played by Brandy Rogers) as Stanley lords over his assembled poker buddies (including a bereft Mitch sobbing into his Dixie beer), the doctor from the sanitarium silently observing the sordid tableau, and Stella sitting on the front stoop, crying for her sister - or perhaps, more intuitively, for herself and the world she's made for herself and her new baby - is to admit that I found myself even more affected by A Streetcar Named Desire than I could have ever expected. Boiler Room Theatre's production of Streetcar spotlights the company in its finest hour, an accomplishment theater companies of every ilk should aspire to, its cumulative impact transformative and inspiring.

In addition to the aforementioned actors who are so impressive in their efforts in A Streetcar Named Desire, credit should go to Paige Hall (as Eunice), Will Sevier (Steve), Jerry Henderson (the doctor) and Colin McCann (Pablo) for their estimable contributions to this stellar production.

Corbin Green's scenic and lighting design provides the ideal setting for the play, using the intimate confines of the Boiler Room stage to the advantage of the script, creating a stifling and smothering ambience that is palpable. The production's sound design, by Jamey Green and John Warren, captures the sounds of New Orleans so wonderfully as to convince the audience member he or she is, indeed, in the French Quarter with its cacophony of sound and fury (with apologies to Mr. Faulkner for the obvious, but apropos, purloining of his words). Costume designer Katie Delaney deserves much praise for her costumes which so effectively clothe the characters in a period manner that is perfect for each of the people we come to know throughout the play. Further, Mary Bea Johnson is to be lauded for her terrific properties design for Streetcar, which helps to underscore the time, place and setting of this quintessentially Southern Gothic play.

- A Streetcar Named Desire. By Tennessee Williams. Directed by Corbin Green. Presented by Boiler Room Theatre, Franklin. Through July 23. For reservations, call (615) 794-7744. For further details about Boiler Room Theatre, including their 2012 season, visit the company website at www.boilerroomtheatre.com.

photos of Travis Scott Brazil, Corrie Miller and Evelyn O'Neal Brush by Rick Malkin

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