Take a Ride on A Streetcar Named Desire With the New City Players

Elizabeth Price and Timothy Mark Davis in New City Players’  A Streetcar Named Desire Photos by Morgan Sophia

By Britin Haller

Arguably one of the greatest dramatic plays in American theatrical history, and certainly of its time, A Streetcar Named Desire has rolled onto the Island City Stage with a bang. Timothy Mark Davis, the producing artistic director for New City Players (NCP), describes their rendition of Streetcar as “the theatrical event of the summer,” and he may be right.

Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece pitting a working-class war veteran against a former aristocratic Southern belle has been performed thousands of times. As director Stuart Meltzer says in his director’s note, “It was important to release the ghosts of past productions that will limit or dictate how the play should be presented or performed.”

Part of NCP’s mission statement is to create transformative theatre. They’ve done so here. This is not your parent’s Streetcar. It’s a kinder, gentler version, still with the climatic moments, but with character interpretations allowing us to take a closer look at the wounded people underneath the monsters. If, in fact, they are monsters, because that’s up for debate. Since the job of the dramaturg is to know the play as well as the playwright, essentially standing in for Tennessee Williams since he can’t be here, we have to assume that given the remarkable complexity of Streetcar, and the way NCP interprets and obviously understands it, the show’s dramaturg, Ali Tallman, knows her stuff.

A Streetcar Named Desire burst upon the scene in 1947 when it opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre under the direction of Elia Kazan. Anyone lucky enough to attend saw Kim Hunter, Karl Malden, Jessica Tandy, and a then-unknown kid named Marlon Brando. He didn’t stay unknown long and soon found himself starring in Kazan’s 1951 film version with Vivien Leigh taking over for Tandy in the already iconic role of Blanche DuBois. Leigh was a much bigger name and thought to be a bigger draw. She had already wowed theater-goers once with her classic Southern belle, Scarlett O’Hara, and producers hoped she could easily do it again. Leigh and Brando created such magic together that some consider them the greatest screen duo of all time.

Casey Sacco, left, and Elizabeth Price in New City Players’  A Streetcar Named Desire . Photos by Morgan Sophia

The plot of Streetcar is complex. It’s violent at times with themes of adultery, sexual assault, domestic abuse, alcoholism, homosexuality, suicide, and mental illness. Set in 1947 in New Orleans’ French Quarter, A Streetcar Named Desire tells the story of what happens when Stella Kowalski’s older sister Blanche DuBois comes to town unannounced to visit.

We know right away it’s warm outside because two women in shift dresses are sitting on the stairs chatting quietly and fanning themselves. A flower man off to the side seems obsessed with a single bouquet. We hear voices, birds chirping, footsteps, and streetcar noises to name a few. Enter Blanche dressed in a tailored jacket and skirt and carrying her purse. She’s looking for the home of her sister Stella, but it can’t be in this run-down neighborhood, can it?

Stella and her husband Stanley Kowalski, whom she loves without measure, live in a two-room apartment with only a see-through screen separating where they eat from where they sleep. Blanche is not impressed and tells Stella about these accommodations, “I’m not going to be hypocritical, I’m going to be honestly critical.” It’s obvious the couple don’t have a lot, and when Blanche shows up with one more mouth to feed and spouting stories that don’t quite seem logical, Stanley takes umbrage. And it’s all downhill from there …

Blanche immediately dislikes Stanley and thinks he’s all wrong for her naïve little sister. But that doesn’t stop Blanche from putting on her womanly charms and flirting with him every chance she gets, as she does with just about every man she sees. Blanche is highly sensitive for several reasons, but her fading looks and loss of her family’s plantation home are at the top of that very long list. She lives in a fantasy world. A true Southern belle who was, along with her sister Stella, raised on a 20-acre plantation called Belle Reve (French for sweet dreams) in Laurel, Mississippi (even with a family graveyard!) Blanche grew up with privilege, and she is shocked to see Stella’s current living conditions.

From the get-go, Stanley and Blanche do not get along, although he really does try to play nice in the beginning, even if it’s just for his wife’s sake. Stanley drinks beer and plays poker with his pals and probably scratches his chest hair to remind himself how manly he is. Carbonell Award-winner Timothy Mark Davis stars as the decorated World War II master sergeant who saw action in Italy and has returned home traumatized. We didn’t call it PTSD in 1947 (rather battle neurosis), but Stanley likely is suffering from it.

Timothy Mark Davis in New City Players’  A Streetcar Named
Desire Photos by Morgan Sophia

Unlike Brando’s Stanley, Davis’ portrayal is more subdued. More introspective if you will. Watching Davis’ face when he is not the main focus and is simply reacting is fascinating. We can see him actively listening and the wheels turning in his head as he clues himself in to Blanche’s lies and manipulations. It’s clear he loves Stella in his own messed-up way. Davis has lost some of the excessive brute force that oozed from Brando’s pores. Davis makes it more easy to believe that this is a man who is truly suffering also.

Blanche, as well, seems different. Gone is the rough intentional edge that Leigh presented at times, although Blanche can still be catty, the woman we see may best be described as a wilting fragile flower. This contrasts with the flower seller guy making sure his flowers stay fresh. Blanche floats around as if on a cloud. Her madness is quieter, more surreal. Ethereal, if you will. Blanche is so far into her dream world, she can’t see the hypocrisy with which she conducts herself, that underneath her genteel façade, she’s at worst a predator, and at best, a cougar. She takes frequent baths she says to “soothe her nerves,” and that may be true, but these baths are also symbolic and empty attempts to wash away her sins.

Carbonell and Silver Palm Award-nominated actress Elizabeth Price said in an interview that she has been wanting to play Blanche DuBois since she was a young girl and watched Streetcar (her favorite film) with her mother. Price immediately felt a deep connection and sympathy for the character, some might even call it an obsession (in a good way!).

From the moment Price walked on stage to the scene in which she is escorted off, it’s as if she is channeling the spirits of Blanche Dubois, Jessica Tandy, Vivien Leigh, and Tennessee Williams, all rolled into one. It’s simply a tour de force performance from Price, and this critic’s favorite portrayal ever of the character.

Price never goes over the top in her portrayal, even during one of her lengthy monologues like the compelling (and true!) cost of death and dying, or when the script calls for histrionics or delusions of grandeur as Blanche yearning for things she will never have again.

Casey Sacco, left, and Sheena O. Murray in New City Players’ A Streetcar Named Desire Photos by Morgan Sophia

As Stella Kowalski, Casey Sacco makes us feel Stella’s pain as she is forced again and again to choose between her husband and her sister. The infamous “Stella” scene where Stella and Stanley fight, and Stanley begs her forgiveness out on the street ultimately taking her to their marital bed, is choreographed like a beautiful ballet thanks to fight and intimacycoordinators David A. Hyland and Jeni Hacker.

Sheena O. Murray as Eunice Hubbell, the feisty landlord who lives upstairs, and Russell Kerr as her husband, Steve, have some good bits and entertain us while necessary props are being switched out.

Actors Alex Joyel, Juan Gamero, and Inez Barlatier, each with two small parts, prove they are no small actors. As the newspaper boy, Alex Joyel is especially tender and endearing, and as Stanley’s poker buddy Pablo, Joyel has a lot of fun entertaining us during scene breaks. As a side note, Joyel’s Streetcar-themed video shorts on YouTube are hysterical and leave us wanting more.

Juan Gamero is the doctor with the extra-long needle to whom Blanche utters her famous last line, but he most shines as the man selling flowers on the street. This role is almost without dialogue, but the focus with which Gamero works on that one bouquet is almost like an interpretive dance. It’s so slowly repetitive that it becomes trance-like. This is a man who is serious about his flowers.

Inez Barlatier scats (literally) between scenes as one of the neighborhood ladies. She exudes energy and gets us snapping our fingers and moving in our seats. What a voice. Her presence as the nurse who comes for Blanche is intimidating. It’s never a bad thing when an actor leaves us wanting more, as does Barlatier.

Jesus Reyna and Elizabeth Price in New City Players’ A Streetcar Named  Desire Photos by Morgan Sophia

Jesus Reyna as Harold “Mitch” Mitchell excels. Mitch served with Stanley in the war so likely he’s traumatized too, and to top it all off, he lives with his elderly dying mother whose one wish is to see him get married before she goes. Blanche is all too happy to help him with that problem. We feel his pain. Reyna has a great face for theatre, and when the tide turns, and Mitch finally realizes what he’s dealing with, we see him go the gamut from complete adoration of Miss DuBois to utter revulsion.

Lighting and sound are provided by Annabel Herrera and Ernesto K. Gonzalez respectively. Light is an enemy of Blanche’s for the obvious reasons of not wanting anyone to see her facial flaws, or be able to tell her real age. A pre-show extremely bright stage light becomes just a symbol for covering up Blanche’s shady past with darkness when she adorns it with a paper lantern. The problem for Blanche is that like a bandage as it can be ripped off at any time. Shadows are relevant here. The sound of a train going by during some of the more crucial moments is cleverly utilized to increase the tension, almost taking the place of a commercial break. Outdoor noises add to the feeling of actually being in the French Quarter.

Costume design is by South Florida actress Laura Turnbull who is participating in her first show for New City Players. Dress is typical for the time period and income class, and Blanche’s goodies and treasures are appropriately fine enough to instill confusion in Stanley’s muddled brain.

An intimate venue requires directors to think outside the box, and sometimes take the action up, and that is what scenic designer, Aubrey Kestell, has done with her practical and functional set design. Set dresser, Jameelah Bailey, recreates the era with props.

But no prop is as important as Blanche’s luggage trunk, which is a character unto itself. The trunk stands to one side reminding us of its constant presence over Blanche’s life. “Everything I own is in that trunk,” Blanche informs us. As audience members, just like Stanley, we want to open it and look within at the secrets it possesses.

Blanche is never figuratively without her baggage, nor is she literally without it. It’s heavy, it’s weighing her down with the loss within it. But yet, she clings to those possessions like she would her last breath. And when Stanley decides enough is enough, and he’s going to see what treasures it holds, he goes at it full-force with an intensity showing his utter disdain for physical objects, and by extension, Blanche herself. The items are sentimental junk mostly, rhinestones, costume jewelry, and fake furs, but Stanley doesn’t know that, and he wonders how a schoolteacher can afford such finery. Gifts from men, Blanche says, hopelessly wanting us to believe she is still worthy of such things. “What is this sister of yours?” Stanley asks Stella when he finds Blanche’s imitation pearls. “A deep-sea diver?”

As Stanley puts the puzzle pieces together and finds out the actual truth about Blanche’s sordid past, thereby exposing his sister-in-law for exactly who she is, the last string holding her fragile psyche together starts to unravel. On the one hand, Blanche is a wounded bird frantically clinging to her past. But as she sinks further and further into her madness, her desperate claws come out to the point where Stanley actually envisions her as the enemy who is there to hurt him, not unlike the ones he hunted in Italy during the war. As a result, some may see Stanley as the hunted instead of the hunter, a victim himself of Blanche’s insanity. We wish we knew what he was like before he went to battle to help us resolve it within our own minds.

Discussions on Blanche vary. Does she slowly descend into madness because of her traumas and circumstances, or has she always been a narcissistic harlot, one who ultimately gets what she deserves? “I’ve been very foolish casting my pearls before swine,” she tells Stanley. It likely depends on who you ask and what day you are asking because the answer to that question lies somewhere in between.

There are no right answers here, it appears. Transformative theatre, indeed.

Despite Stanley’s physical crimes against Stella and Blanche, one could argue all three of them are tragic figures in their own right. Definitely Blanche and Stanley, who are thrust together in the wrong place at the wrong time, like two reactive chemicals that combust and explode when contact is made. Stella, while not mentally ill necessarily, allows herself to be abused because the sex is good, and he’s a working man, but she has allowed herself to have zero identity outside her husband. Clearly, without him, she would be lost.

And in the end, A Streetcar Named Desire can be summed up in one word. Loss.

Loss of love, loss of family, loss of home, loss of dreams, loss of self, and ultimately … loss of mind.

New City Players is presenting a stellar’ production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Don’t miss this Streetcar’s stop. Elizabeth Price who plays. Blanche DuBois is depending on your kindness.

Sidenote: And what about the play’s title? Thinking the name to be just symbolic, how fascinating was it to learn there really was such a thing? “They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields,” Blanche tells us early on. In actuality, the Desire line was a popular streetcar route through the French Quarter from 1920 to 1948. Starting at Canal Street, it headed down the legendary Bourbon Street, and ended up on Desire Street. This proved to be gold for Tennessee Williams.

Britin Haller is a mystery author and an editor for Turner Publishing. Her latest short story “So Many Shores in Crookland” can be read in the 150^th issue of Black Cat Weekly. Britin’s latest edit, a cozy mystery novel called Dumpster Dying is by Michelle Bennington and available where books are sold. Find Britin across social media.

A Streetcar Named Desire from New City Players runs through August 4th at Island City Stage, 2304 N. Dixie Hwy, Wilton Manors, (south of Oakland Park Blvd.); Thurs-Sat at 8 p.m.; Sun at 3 p.m.; Running time approx. 150 minutes includes a 15-minute intermission. Tickets start at $25. Call 954-376-6114, or visit newcityplayers.org. Stick around following the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday performances for some after the show Streetcar-themed fun.