A Streetcar Named Desire
By Tennessee Williams
Paramount Theatre | 2024
Photo Credit: Liz Lauren
NEW ORLEANS. The heat is sweltering; the liquor flows, and the secrets are thick as humidity. Streetcar confronts us with the tenuous relationship between reality and illusion, hope and despair and the brutal battle for beauty and tenderness when the world feels like it’s conspiring against you. The players are in place. The cards are dealt. Hold on for your life.
“Streetcar” has not been seen much of late in Chicago; the last truly memorable production was David Cromer’s staging at Writers Theatre in Glencoe in 2010. This one is right up there with that gobsmacker…
I had a sense this “Streetcar” was going to be really good when I first saw [Stella’s] face as Hoekstra’s Stanley entered. Blanche may depend on the kindness of strangers but “Streetcar” depends on Stella being so sensually consumed by all that Stanley has to offer her that she sells her sister down the river…
Paramount’s show doesn’t come with the typical Big Easy soundtrack, nor does it traffic in the standard sweaty sensuality, as advertised in the marketing materials. Sex here is an act of both destruction and survival, as Williams knew and [Claudia] Cassidy hated to admit.
Four Stars
What a stellar revival it is. Paramount’s taut, smoldering production was worth the wait. Steady tension animates co-directors Jim Corti and Elizabeth Swanson’s charged, well-paced production whose climax (still harrowing no matter how many times one sees it) is followed by a nicely ambiguous coda. The final image unfolds as a kind of standoff between Casey Hoekstra’s sinewy, tightly coiled Stanley Kowalski and his wife, Stella, played by Alina Taber, whose raised chin suggests a woman set to challenge her husband and assert her independence.
Four Stars
Production Team
Elizabeth Swanson – Co-Director
Jim Corti – Co-Director
Angela Weber Miller – Scenic Designer
Mara Blumenfeld – Costume Designer
Cat Wilson – Lighting Designer
Forrest Gregor – Sound Designer
Aimee Plant – Properties Designer
Sarah Scanlon – Intimacy & Fight Director
Susan Gosdick – Dialect Coach
Erin Nicole Eggers – Stage Manager
Emma Franklin – Assistant Stage Manager
Trent Stork – Casting Director
Cast
Amanda Drinkall – Blanche DuBois
Casey Hoekstra – Stanley Kowalski
Alina Taber – Stella Kowalski
Ben Page – Harold “Mitch” Mitchell
Andrea Uppling – Eunice Hubbell, U/S Blanche DuBois
Joshua L. Green – Steve Hubbell
Roberto Antonio Mántica – Pablo Gonzales, U/S Stanley Kowalski
Adriel Irizarry – Doctor, Young Collector, U/S Pablo Gonzales
Desiree Gonzalez – Nurse, Flower Vendor, U/S Stella Kowalski
Tatiana Bustamante – U/S Eunice Hubbell, U/S Nurse, U/S Flower Vendor
Gabriel Fries – U/S Harold “Mitch” Mitchell, U/S Steve Hubbell, U/S Doctor, U/S Young Collector
And when the production is firing on all cylinders . . . you end up with a revival as glorious as the one currently running at the Paramount Theatre’s smaller Copley stage, a production codirected by Jim Corti and Elizabeth Swanson that expertly capitalizes on everything Williams did right in this amazing play. (Many argue it is his finest work.)
Highly Recommended
This production is vivid, passionate, and physical, a true masterpiece of realism. The performances are all-around stellar and together with a beautiful set create as immersive a drama as can be asked for.
