Fresh route taken to ‘Streetcar’
Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” isn’t just a play. It’s an icon, its scenes so codified in collective memory that we can see an uncaptioned photo from the play and immediately know its origin. It’s ripe for parody and, worse, for default interpretation, for productions that give audiences exactly what they’ve learned to expect.
The magic of Ubuntu Theater Project’s production of the 1947 drama, which opened Saturday, Feb. 3, is that it sheds the baggage of decades of expectation. Directed by Emilie Whelan, one of the best-known classics of American theater feels like a new play.
Much of the freshness comes from Ubuntu’s choice of venue. The company’s made an intimate theater inside of downtown Oakland’s Alice Collective by curtaining off an elongated rectangle. You proceed down a dark, winding path to get to the space within a space, where the stage is sparsely populated with artful set pieces — naked dangling lightbulbs, a rolling staircase ladder, piles of suitcases.
The show begins on a lit fuse. Parading in with a clap-heavy rendition of “That’s A-Plenty,” the ensemble instantly conjures a New Orleans that’s dangerous in its rowdiness, its sensuality, its languor. These revelers are
so unhinged that anything might happen, and within moments, something does. Stephanie Anne Johnson’s lighting design, which throughout the show is dusky with a mischievous touch of fiery color, directs our attention to a hitherto hidden part of the theater, where Blanche DuBois (Lisa Ramirez) makes her entrance as if beamed down from outer space.
She might as well be from another universe. Penniless and friendless in her native Laurel, Miss., the fallen Blanche intends to trespass indefinitely on the hospitality of her sister Stella (Sarita Ocón) and Stella’s “Polack” husband Stanley (Ogie Zulueta). But the clash between this needy, fanciful would-be Southern belle and her feral, virile brother-in-law is immediate and cosmic. For it’s not just personalities at loggerheads but genders, races, civilizations, historical narratives and perceptions of reality all warring it out in a cramped two-room apartment.
Williams’ writing is rightly celebrated for its poetry; in his hands, a streetcar route unspools one’s fate as mystically as might the lines on one’s palm. But Whelan’s able cast also lets you appreciate anew just how rigorous that poetry is. Gorgeous language never exists merely to be gorgeous, unlike so much contemporary playwriting that casts out imagery seemingly at random, in the hope that it accretes meaning the way dust bunnies acquire mass.
Ramirez’s Blanche isn’t just a delicate, wilting flower but, when she makes the decision to leave her elaborate make-believe world, a ruthless observer acutely attuned to the shadows that cross others’ faces, the pauses and inflections that signal a change in her status.
Zulueta’s Stanley derives his power not from sheer brawn but from unpredictability. He injects more joy and jocularity into the role than have many of his predecessors, using the momentum of that energy to flip into something sinister. Perhaps most striking of all is Ocón’s Stella, which blends the deep-rooted goodness of Olivia de Havilland with the lasciviousness of trailer trash.
The tragedy of “Streetcar” is how completely wrong both Stanley and Blanche are. There’s no way Blanche can stay with them, but there’s no good way to get her to leave. Ubuntu’s production makes that dilemma one we all share. It’s not just about a crumbling Southern way of life and a literary idealism unfit for a cold, modern world; it’s about the cruelties we must all perpetrate to hold our flimsy homes together.