The Production: A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
The Company: Melbourne Theatre Company
The Theatre: The Playhouse at The Arts Centre
Stars: 3
Until: 17 August
If you get a full subscription to the Melbourne Theatre Company you know that the season will track like this:
- One play that will stay with you forever (37 and Julia)
- Three plays which you really like and rave about (Seventeen and the Almighty Sometimes)
- Four play which you'll find redeeming features with and will leave you scratching your head
- One which you'll stay for, but only to find out what happens.
- And one which you'll walk out at interval.
And it's not the acting. Nikki Shiels is a very, very good Blanche DuBois, an aging Southern Belle down her luck. The rest of the cast are good.
I loved the set, which was set on a turntable, showing different parts of Stanley and Stella's shabby flat.
But the play is boring. Blanche is annoying. The attitudes to domestic violence have changed so that seeing Stanley go ape a Stella early in the first act is no long acceptable.
If I'm really honest, I spent the first half checking my watch wandering when I could get out.
Jay made comment that she really doesn't like these mid-20th century "big plays" and made the remark that everybody in these plays are drunk. After seeing the superlative Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf a few weeks ago, I know what can be done with these plays to make them excellent.
This production missed the mark for me. I did not care one iota about what was happening to the characters. I didn't need to go back in for the last hour of the play, which is a pity. If there was a bit more narrative drive to the play, I might have enjoyed it more.
As I said, we got our money's worth with the hour and forty-five minutes first act.
It wasn't my cup of tea.
Next.
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