A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire: The Big Difficult

Zachary Scott Theatre Center

Kleberg Stage,

through March 11

Running Time: 3 hrs

Every production of a play, other than its original one, is like a cover song. Especially if it's an American Classic that many folks know by heart or have simply heard so much about that its framework and catchphrases, at least, have stained their consciousness since childhood; especially then, a later production is like a golden oldie being recorded by some new band that appreciates the power of the old song so much they're compelled to try their hands at it. You know: Marilyn Manson covering "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," the Kronos Quartet paying homage to Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," etc. Sometimes, regardless of the relative merit of the original, it works … and sometimes it doesn't.

Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is one hell of a classic to attempt re-staging, even when the resources of the Zachary Scott Theatre Center are behind it. Raphael Parry, who has previously directed for Dallas' Undermain Theatre, has approached this show, the program notes inform us, via Williams' pre-production script and a letter that the playwright penned to original director Elia Kazan, illuminating the story's intent. It might seem, then, that the resultant show would do especially well by someone, like your reviewer, who had never seen the play or its Hollywood version and so had nothing other than a small jumble of sound bites to compare it with. But, well, listen.

To recap, we're presented with the story of Stella and Stanley Kowalski when Stella's sister Blanche comes to visit them in their low-rent apartment in New Orleans. Blanche and Stella come from an old Southern family, lately fallen to ruin, and by the time of the visit Blanche's past is the sort of thing we'd likely see, these days, on the Jerry Springer show. Worse, Blanche is in such fervent denial of that past that her cover-ups are not just on the border but sometimes within the city limits of dementia. In seeking the mercy of her sister, though, she runs smack into working-class Stanley and his proletarian bullshit detector. Tension ensues, emotions flare, violence erupts, and eventually Blanche's illusions are shattered like a bare lightbulb.

What succeeds in this production is the acting of Jo Ann Robinson as Blanche and Jana Lee Brockman as Stella. They inhabit the characters fully and seamlessly, bringing to easy life a relationship so well imagined by Williams: Their movements, their tones of voice, the looks on their faces -- this is how sisters are, together, under these circumstances. Stanley, on the other hand, is something else again.

While the supporting actors, if not transcending the stage the way the two women do, do a decent enough job, I'm not sure what director Parry is getting at with Stanley. Joe York plays this pivotal role, and from the start -- and unceasingly throughout -- it seems like the big Kowalski's on some kind of digital PCP. Every line, regardless of what it might have sounded like had the characters and the situations been real, is delivered in a rushed and distinctly robotic monotone, as if, in attempting to capture the brute brute heart of a brute like Stanley, it was decided to replace the man with a revved-up T-shirt-removing machine. So many of the scenes seem to beg for Stanley to explode after a long slow burn from the depths, after a build-up in which we anxiously anticipate the imminent violence, but York goes from zero to 60 in no seconds flat, and that 60 is exemplified by little other than a shouted monotone.

Add to this befuddling gambit a set and costumes riddled with intentional anachronisms -- Slimline phone? Modern denim jacket? -- and musical underscoring that jars like a bad laugh-track, and by the end, the show seems to be having a nervous breakdown. Not a breakdown that amplifies or resonates well with Blanche's concurrent, final shattering, but one that robs the drama of its realism -- subjective or otherwise -- and dulls the impact of its climax.

There's nothing wrong with a cover song, and some may even be better or just interestingly different than the original, and that's good news for everyone. This Streetcar, though, is merely painfully off-key.