Writers’ Theatre
Chicago
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There are few plays “as deep and poetic and cruel and altogether haunting” as Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece, said Hedy Weiss in the Chicago Sun-Times. Consequently, many directors are so awed by the script that they fail to take many chances. David Cromer, thankfully, is not one of them. The Obie Award winner has created an “eye-opening take” on Williams’ allegory about the demise of the Old South. He and designer Collette Pollard have devised an almost “incestuously intimate” setting that makes audience members feel like cramped cohabitants of the shabby New Orleans tenement in which fragile, genteel Blanche DuBois has been forced to stay with her sister, Stella. The conflict between Blanche and her coarse brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, builds to such explosive force that “you will never be able to see this play again in quite the same way.”
Cromer’s staging “springs to life” thanks to some of Chicago’s best young talent, said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. His raw, energetic performers embody their characters both physically and emotionally. Matt Hawkins’ Stanley is muscular, “loud, and brash,” giving in to every primal urge as he wavers between brutishness and neediness. Natasha Lowe’s doe eyes and alabaster skin perfectly suit Blanche’s vulnerability, though her performance doesn’t quite capture Blanche’s “faded Southern gentility.” In an interesting twist, Cromer initially frames Stanley as a more sympathetic figure than “prissy, neurotic” Blanche. Nevertheless, as Stanley chips away at her sanity until she completely falls apart, the unnerved audience is left feeling nothing but pity for a woman forced to depend “on the kindness of strangers.”
