With over 90% tickets gone two weeks before the show opens, and the first 3 performances sold out, it is clear why the team behind A Streetcar Named Desire decided they didn’t need an official press preview.
Director Anna Hextall says that she has been trying to shield the cast (and by the sounds of it, herself) from the ticket sales and excitement surrounding the play for fear of overwhelming them. “They’re a very talented cast, but they’ve got to have the confidence to be fearless on stage”, she explains. “Stanley, for example, has got to be full of raw emotion, but he can’t throw himself around. It’s very important not to overplay it and James [Corrigan] has got that”.
Tennessee Williams’ iconic play, which won him the Pullitzer prize in 1948 revolves around Blanche DuBois, a Southern Belle, whose arrival in New Orleans to stay with her sister Stella and husband Stanley, a member of the rising industrial class, generates a clash of cultures. As Blanche’s delusions and Stanley’s animalistic brutality spiral out of control, and as Blanche’s past begins to catch up with her, the consequences lead to tragedy.
This is clearly a different kettle of fish from some of the recent student Playhouse productions, which have of late become one epic ensemble piece after another – visually stunning, but perhaps lacking the script to support it. “Obviously parts of Streetcar are surreal,” Hextall admits, “but I much prefer the natural grittiness and depth that you get with such a great script. It’s such a sexy, beautiful, vibrant piece, but at the same time very moving and shocking”. The Playhouse had suggested she take an original spin on such a well-known play, maybe by putting Stanley in a wheelchair, but she eventually decided against this. “I’m just not that kind of director, and the play is enough of a challenge – you don’t need to do anything crazy like switching gender roles”.
But although it might not have Royal Hunt’s gold leaf or The Odyssey’s epic fight scenes, Streetcar’s set is not being overlooked by any means. Designer Anna Lewis and her team of 17 set builders will be in the Playhouse workshop 9 hours a day for the next week, and the famous spiral staircase which is currently lying in 110 pieces is estimated to take between 2 hours and a day to put together. Hextall shows me photos and models of the set, which have been carefully thought through to look like a real house. “I wanted a functional set, one where you open a drawer and there really are forks and spoons inside. When we move into the theatre, I’m going to get the cast to practice running up and down the stairs and sitting on the chairs and beds. They’ve got to instinctively know the heights of all the surfaces – there’s nothing worse than watching actors move around a ‘house’ they’re supposed to have lived in for 20 years as though they hardly know where anything is”.
Making it realistic and believable is evidently an important aim of the production. The New Orleans setting, with two of the characters from the Deep South, makes the accents a big hurdle for the cast to overcome. As Hextall says bluntly, “either an accent sounds real, or it doesn’t”. But with the help of OUDS voice coach Margo Annet, books, videos and recordings, the medley of accents seem to have come together. Blanche (Ruby Thomas) and Stella (Hannah Roberts) have as good as perfected the southern drawl, in contrast with the men’s New Orleans’accents; the divide particularly significant in the final scene (which I watched being rehearsed).
Ruby Thomas, who has already starred in TV show Lewis and blockbuster Wild Child as well as a dozen plays in Oxford, confesses to being “really nervous” about playing lead Blanche DuBois: the accent, the size of her part, and the extent of her character’s experience. It is one of the potential difficulties with the play: a challenging and controversial role because of Blanche’s past and the events that take place towards the end of the piece, which has also been played by the likes of Vivien Leigh, Rachel Weisz and Cate Blanchett. Hextall too says she can’t let herself think about the magnitude of the production: “I’ve got to keep my head over the water”.
But despite the fears, it seems that the hype is not unjustified. It is hard to judge how the play will turn out from a snippet, but the final scene, even when still in rehearsal, is genuinely moving – those who know the end of the story will realise how tricky that is to carry off. The last moments of the relationship between Stanley and Blanche, with Ruby Thomas unable to hide her fragility against Corrigan’s domination of the stage, made me want to witness the events that led up to such a conclusion. Of course one scene doesn’t make a production, but it certainly looks gripping – and at this rate the remaining tickets aren’t going to last long.
