Paul Mescal will star in a new revival of A Streetcar Named Desire off Broadway, reprising his award-winning performance from London. The production will make its U.S. debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this spring, with exact dates to be announced. He reprises the leading role of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire from director Rebecca Frecknall's (Cabaret on Broadway) in London's West End in 2023. The show won three Olivier Awards there, including Best Revival and Best Actor for Mescal. Tennessee Williams's play takes place during a New Orleans summer, when fading Southern belle Blanche comes to visit her sister, Stella, and Stella's husband, Stanley. Reality and illusion collide as Blanche tries to escape her past, which Stanley is determined to unravel.
This is all compelling; the play is so brilliantly conceived and plotted it can hardly be anything else. While Blanche, with her airs and long baths, works Stanley’s last nerve, he mercilessly needles her and debunks her claims. (She is no virgin, even aside from her early marriage to a doomed gay man.) Trying to keep the peace is Stella, who despite everything still loves her sister. (In Anjana Vasan’s excellent performance, we sense that love, even more than the usual weak-tea toleration.) But as Blanche’s options foreclose on her — Stanley foils her chance to snag his one halfway-decent poker buddy as a husband — even Stella grows fearful, and the balance tips disastrously."
What makes Mescal’s performance so riveting is that, without ever blunting or apologizing for Stanley’s cruelty, he also reveals the soft belly of the role, the vulnerability and hurt that, for a man in his world with his upbringing, can naturally lead to violence. 'When we first met, me and you, you thought I was common,' he reminds Stella, who was raised with Blanche as part of the fading Southern aristocracy, at a former plantation called Belle Reve. 'How right you was, baby. I was common as dirt. You showed me the snapshot of the place with the columns. I pulled you down off them columns and how you loved it… And wasn’t we happy together, wasn’t it all okay till she showed here?
| 1947 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
| 1950 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
| 1973 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
| 1973 | Broadway |
Return Engagement [Broadway] Broadway |
| 1988 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
| 1992 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
| 1999 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 2005 | Broadway |
Roundabout Revival Broadway |
| 2009 | West End |
Donmar Warehouse Revival West End |
| 2012 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
| 2016 | Off-Broadway |
St. Ann's Warehouse Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
| 2020 | Williamstown, MA (Regional) |
Williamstown Theater Festival Production Williamstown, MA (Regional) |
| 2023 | West End |
West End |
| 2025 | Off-Broadway |
BAM Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Performance in a Play | Anjana Vasan |
| 2025 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play | Patsy Ferran |
| 2025 | Drama League Awards | DISTINGUISHED PERFORMANCE | Paul Mescal |
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