Overzealous Direction May Leave Viewers of New Revival of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ Yelling Something Other Than ‘Stella’

Imagine you’re a stage actor about to dive into an especially juicy or tension-packed scene. Suddenly, one of your cast mates feels compelled to enhance the excitement by jumping up and down, or starting to shout or sing loudly, or maybe even doing cartwheels.This is, in essence, the dilemma facing each of the talented players in a new revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music — except here, they’re being upstaged not by any of their fellow company members but rather by their director, Rebecca Frecknall, who originally helmed this production for London’s Almeida Theatre.This shouldn’t be surprising. Ms. Frecknall gained attention on Broadway last season with another U.K. import, “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club,” which revisited the beloved Kander and Ebb musical with such slobbering overstatement that one could picture Bob Fosse cringing in his grave.“Streetcar” isn’t a musical, of course, but Tennessee Williams’s torrid classic is as good a vehicle as any for a director with histrionic tendencies, and Ms. Frecknall does not hold back. Actually, music does figure prominently in her staging: Each act begins with the ensemble gathered on platforms — Madeleine Girling’s set is practically bare, with a few props functioning as scenery — followed by a thunderclap of percussion.Patsy Ferran and Paul Mescal in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire.’ Julieta CervantesA drummer, Tom Penn, who also has a small acting role near the end, sits above the stage; he will continue to embellish the production throughout its two and a half hours (not including an intermission), offering jingles, rolls, and booms to evoke anxiety, danger, and fury — as if those qualities weren’t already screamingly obvious in the text.There’s also intermittent singing — whispery at times, like a child’s voice humming ominously in a horror movie — and dance, of a sort. When assembled as a group, the actors protract and expand their bodies as if suffering gut punches and reaching out for help. Patsy Ferran, the actress cast as Blanche DuBois, Williams’s fading Southern belle, is gracefully stalked by Jabez Sykes, representing the ghost of Blanche’s husband, whose tragic death expedited her ruin.Ms. Ferran is not, to her great credit, entirely overwhelmed by these shenanigans. Her wide-eyed, wiry Blanche is among the more patently fragile and neurotic I’ve seen, but there’s also a fire within her that can make her exchanges with Stanley Kowalski, Blanche’s brutish brother-in-law, especially compelling and troubling. Stanley is played by Paul Mescal, an accomplished trouper and rising film star who brings the imposing physicality and slow-burning presence that have been associated with this role since a young Marlon Brando introduced it. When this Stanley erupts, it can make you shrink back in your seat; at a recent preview, as his final, awful confrontation with Blanche approached, I thought of hiding under mine — until Ms. Frecknall unleashed yet another trick that, for me, sapped the event of its gravity and its sting.Dwane Walcott lends a lovely, reassuring sweetness as Stanley’s more gentle friend, Mitch, who is drawn to Blanche before everything goes irrevocably wrong. But the character who emerges as most interesting in this “Streetcar” is Stella, Blanche’s sister and Stanley’s wife, who is torn between them, loving and suffering for both while also preparing for the birth of her first child.In a performance that can be as witty as it is touching, Anjana Vasan conveys Stella’s relative sturdiness but also the impact of these forces. At the end, Ms. Frecknall gives her a moment that suggests “Streetcar” may be Stella’s tragedy as well as Blanche’s; it’s one of the few directorial touches in this production that struck me as intriguing as opposed to irritating.

Overzealous Direction May Leave Viewers of New Revival of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ Yelling Something Other Than ‘Stella’

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