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A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. By Tennessee Williams. Directed by Liv Ullmann. Sydney Theatre Company, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington D.C. 6 November 2009.
In her director's notes for this new, international production of a classic American play, Liv Ullmann wrote: "The way I see it, Tennessee Williams wished to pull us out of our own angry darkness, by allowing us to see, to recognize the hurt and the vulnerability and the fear disguised as violence or rudeness or carelessness or what may look like madness." The Sydney Theatre Company's production of A Streetcar Named Desire was a dynamic realization of this interpretation of Williams's play. This production of Streetcar was both an intimate character study of four fragile individuals as well as a portrait of one woman's break with reality.
Under Ullmann's direction the actors embodying Blanche, Stanley, Stella, and Mitch exuded volatility, tension, and the erotic potential of hot, boozesoaked New Orleans. The intensity of these four central actors and Ullmann's directing choices were the greatest strengths of this production.
Blanche Dubois's interactions with Stanley, Stella, and Mitch are the catalyst for the events in A Streetcar Named Desire, and in Cate Blanchett's interpretation, Blanche was...