The Virginia Opera production of A Streetcar Named Desire gave a new perspective on a classic American play, then movie and now an opera (1998). Director Sam Helfrich has said “I discovered that the music had the ability to cleverly reveal aspects of each character that could easily remain hidden in a straight reading of the play.”
He goes on to describe actors who “play big sweeping emotions and telegraph those emotions to the audience through overwrought and excessive ‘acting.’” Helfrich let the music take care of that aspect of the story while working with the cast to create unusually subtle, understated performances.
Stanley in this production disappointed viewers who were looking for someone to equal Marlon Brando’s brutish character from the movie or Rodney Gilfrey’s portrayal in the original San Francisco production of the opera. Stanley Kowalski, a Polish-American, told a condescending Blanche that he is not a Polack; I would add also not a brute. My take is that Stanley and his wife Stella have an erotic and loving relationship and offer the only hope for the redemption of both families through their child. The Stanley we saw was a conflicted young man who, when drinking, struck his wife. Unlike in the movie, in this opera production he does not bellow “Stella,” demanding she come back to him; he lies on the front of the stage in a fetal position crying out for Stella to return. His bravado could not hide his insecurity in the face of his alcoholic, manipulative, condescending, seductive, insane sister-in-law who showed up at his door, threatening his carefully constructed life. His pregnant wife, caught between the two of them, resolved the challenge by letting her sister go while she clung to her husband. She made the right choice.
I am not unsympathetic to Blanche, a fragile woman who was overwhelmed by the death and demise of an old Southern family’s way of life. Scarlet O’Hara one-hundred years on. But she is toxic and bent on her own destruction. No one can save her but we can shed a tear and move on.
Mitch, the mama’s boy, likes the favor of the ladies but he cannot commit.
Mr. Helfrich has moved Tennessee Williams’ mid-twentieth century characters into the twenty-first century where human sexuality and its expression is nuanced in ways that the playwright could hardly have imagined.
Many audience members didn’t recall the Mexican flower woman from the play. In the opera DVD she is there but only as a projected face while the singing of “la morte” is in the background. Virginia Opera’s Mexican flower woman, Sondra Gelb, told us that composer Previn later expanded the role. The dress she wore, as bright as any Rose Parade float covered in designs of flowers on a black background, was stunning for this messenger of death.
I have learned that Mal Vincent’s review in the Virginian-Pilot discouraged some patrons from seeing the final performance. It is appalling that we cannot have a 21st century reviewer for our innovative opera company. Any suggestions?
Personally I’m still delighted with the changes in repertory and staging at our 21st century Virginia Opera. Remember, the only reason we are having this discussion about the merits of a Streetcar production is because of the changes in the last three years. Otherwise we’d be discussing another Traviata.
© John Campbell, 2013, WHRO