Review: THE STREETCAR PROJECT / A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE at Multiple Warehouse Spaces

The Streetcar Project production of A Streetcar Named Desire is a sexy, spare, brilliant traveling new staging of the classic Tennessee Williams play, shown in an airplane hanger in East Los Angeles and a factory warehouse in Venice through November 3rd.  This acclaimed 1947 classic drama won a Pulitzer and in its film adaptation, 12 Academy Awards.  But there is nothing remotely musty or classic feeling about this edgy new Streetcar Project adaptation, created by Lucy Owen, also starring as Blanche DuBois, and director Nick Westrate.

This warehouse production, no props, no set, which I saw in a working factory warehouse in Venice, is muscular, spare, stripped down, with a a compelling lack of affect and self-consciousness.  There is a muscular purity in The Streetcar Project, a bold counterpoint to the delicate, poetic beauty of Tennessee William’s language.  This production feels contemporary and fresh, with an edgy, f-you, punk rock rebelliousness.  Yet it also feels profoundly truthful to the original grittiness of A Streetcar Named Desire, how it was received when it premiered — its New Orleans funk and grime, its rough, perverse sexiness and sweatiness.

Tennessee Williams was living in an apartment in New Orleans when he wrote A Streetcar Named Desire, with his younger boxer boyfriend, Pancho Rodríguez y González.  Their relationship was sexually intense, volatile, and violent, and probably inspired the all consuming, love-abuse dynamic between Stella and Stanley.  Eliza Kazan, the legendary director and pioneer of Method acting who helmed both the Broadway play and the Academy Award winning film A Streetcar Named Desire, commented "If Tennessee was Blanche, Pancho was Stanley….Wasn’t he [Williams] attracted to the Stanleys of the world? Sailors? Rough trade? Danger itself? Yes, and wilder. The violence in that boy, always on a trigger edge, attracted Williams at the very time it frightened him.”

When I think of Tennessee Williams, I do not think immediately of humor, but in addition to being a very sexy, raw, muscular production, The Streetcar project is quite often very laugh-out-funny, capturing the awkwardness, the observant humanism, the dry, lush wit of Williams’ Southern eccentrics.

A spare cast of four brilliant actors, Lucy Owen, Brad Koed, Mallory Portnoy and James Russell play all the parts.  Performances are vibrant, fiercely committed, naturalistic.  In the audience, seated in scattered black folding chairs in the factory space, we are close enough to see the actors twitch, sweat, cry, watch their mascara run.  There is no affection or artifice here — it is pure and raw.  Direction by Nick Westrate is sinewy, fierce, brilliant, hands-on-the-edge-of-your-seat gripping.

As Blanche DuBois, Lucy Owen brings a refreshing imperiousness and intellectualism to this faded Southern belle, a commanding presence and fierce, devastating wit.  But Owen is equally not afraid to lean into Blanche’s mental illness, her hauntedness, her damage, her trauma, her carnivorous, wildfire, devastating hungers and sexuality.  Lucy Owen delivers the kind of rare genius performance that lingers with you indelibly.  What a ferocious talent.

It is a relief there are no Southern accents in The Streetcar Project, since grinding my teeth through bad accent work is one of my least cherished pastimes, but also a bit of a pity, since the gorgeous lushness of Tennessee Williams’ writing begs for the dripping honey syllables of Louisiana’s bayous.

There a few drawbacks to doing A Streetcar Named Desire with this kind of fierce minimalism in a non-theatre space.  In the beginning, the bright lights of the working factory plus the overly loud music makes for a little bit of a clunky start, and there are times that looking at the faces of the audience seated across from you in the factory feels distracting. It can be a little jarring to see actors pretend to drink or go through trunks or wave about nonexistent objects, since there are no props used.  But for the most part, the minimalism reinforces the brutal, raw, fierce realism of this adaptation.  I utterly loved it.

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