“I don’t want realistic. I want magic.” So says the protagonist of Tennesee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and the conflict was established by Sit & Spin Productions in the Louis Room of Norris University Center on Friday night. The set’s dirty slats created the walls of a starkly unrefined apartment that played home to both marital disputes and imaginary figures of insanity. The war of Blanche’s mind, of illusion versus reality, was waged with mostly wonderful and affecting success.
The play opens as Blanche DuBois, a reluctantly aging Southern belle whose grand airs barely mask a terrible fear of reality catching up with her, moves in with her sister and brother-in-law in their New Orleans apartment. Blanche’s nervous airs come in direct collision with Stanley, the brutally honest man of the house, whose animalistic passions and instincts throughout the play are key in drawing her ever more into the trappings of her mind.
Featuring a story of lust and morality and of the illusions created by all to mask the world around them, it’s no surprise that the original 1947 Broadway production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” shocked and amazed its more conservative audience. Although sex and violence are hardly foreign to us today, Sit & Spin still brought Williams’ original commentaries on their presence in common lives with impacting deftness. This is evident in the explicit symbolism of the hanging rope net standing in place of the master bed and also in the white-clothed ensemble playing out the visions of Blanche’s imagination – the beast-like commoners, her own unrestrained lust for a messenger boy, the ensnaring pulls of her illusions (made literal with men pulling ropes attached to Blanche’s waist, tearing her away from escape).
While the symbolism of the set design and interpretation of one of Williams’ most well-known plays made Sit & Spin’s production powerful, it is the cast’s performances which truly make it electrifying. Rachel Kenney’s portrayal of the rapidly deteriorating Blanche DuBois is one of layered intensity, bringing the multiple dimensions necessary to make the character’s delusions and decline evident even as she exercises authority and self-confidence. Around Kenney is the rare equally talented supporting cast: Drigan Lee’s blunt and uncontrolled Stanley and Jessica Kingsdale’s loving and painfully trusting Stella easily bring depth to their characters, while Peter Hegel as Mitch smoothly elicits audience “Aww’s” for both his naïve adoration of Blanche and, later, his heartbreaking disillusionment. Even members of the ensemble shine through their smaller roles – take Julia Weed, for example, whose unconstrained role as a neighbor brings well-earned laughter from the audience with every line.
“A Streetcar Named Desire” features the fierce battle of reality versus illusion, and there are times when the performance sometimes makes the switch from one to the other a little too abruptly. But perhaps that is what Williams intended – after all, facing the bare truth can be unceremoniously shocking after living in a world of your own invention. In the end, however, the two come together: Through the realism and honesty of the performances, the set and the symbolic interpretation, Sit & Spin brought magic to the stage.
