Friday March 29, 2024
A Streetcar Named Desire
Review

A Streetcar Named Desire

August 3 2007

A Streetcar Named Desire, Opera Australia at Sydney Opera House, August 2-29, 2007; seven performances only.

The much-anticipated Australian premiere of the Andre Previn/Philip Littell adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play Streetcar Named Desire is approximately the twelfth production staged around the world since its 1998 world premiere season in San Francisco. Given the cruel (if sometimes deserved) fate of many new operas - one season then off to the archives - this suggests that a considerable number of opera managements think enough of the piece to program it. Quite what that might be is worth exploration, because it really can't be about the music.

Streetcar lives indelibly in popular culture through the 1951 film version, directed by Elia Kazan and adapted for the screen by its author, starring Vivien Leigh as Blanche Dubois and Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski. In a sense the movie is a tyrannical omnipresence for any production since: Previn seems to acknowledge this by actually incorporating Brando's primal scream "Stellaaaaaaaaaa" into the score; and Teddy Tahu Rhodes delivers it without hesitation or a moment's self-consciousness. The point is, however, that because the movie exists in easily available form, it's like a Sutherland or Callas recording: those who follow are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

As a stage play Streetcar is also part of Western theatre culture. It has long had classic status as an exemplar of the steamy, magnolia-scented American Gothic genre which remains peculiarly fascinating to Southerners and non-Southerners alike. This applies particularly now that the underlying themes are no longer shrouded in euphemism to protect the apparently tender sensibilities of post-WW2 audiences. These controversial themes - glossed over when the play was first produced in 1947 and bowdlerised in the movie - include rape, domestic violence, homosexuality, insanity and aberrant sexual behaviour - including something then known as nymphomania. Nymphomania might now be better recognised as a woman displaying sexual appetites similar to those of most men. But back then - and until relatively recently - Blanche's pursuit of younger men was seen as morally repugnant and to be condemned.

From any angle, the themes and the story are dynamic. Blanche Dubois is a fragile, faded Southern belle whose delusions of grandeur run aground on the reality of her situation. The play and opera open as she arrives in New Orleans to take refuge with her sister Stella. She has lost her school teaching job and been run out of their small home town of Laurel, Mississippi for deviant behaviour (entertaining young solders from a nearby army base). More significantly, however, their ancestral ante bellum mansion Belle Reve has also been lost - to debt and mismanagement - and it is this, with all it means in terms of status and hope for the future, that threatens to loosen her precarious grip on sanity. That Stella has turned her back on Belle Reve and married a rough, working class son of Polish immigrants is incomprehensible to Blanche; at the same time her airs and graces are irritating and incomprehensible to Stanley. It is a compellingly poisonous brew.

[page]

Yvonne Kenny as Blanche DuboisPhilip Littell's libretto remains faithful to Williams' play, not least because the Williams estate is ferocious in protecting his work. This is no bad thing, even if it was a nightmare for Littell and Previn, because Streetcar is a play whose language, rhythms and poetry are about as musical as they could be without actually being set to music. Indeed, the perceived operatic quality of the play was evidently seen as one of the stumbling blocks to successful adaptation. Nevertheless, in the opinion of San Francisco Opera, Previn was the composer most likely: a once precocious talent (Oscar-nominee in 1950 at age 21 for Best Musical Scoring on Three Little Words) now elevated to Grand Old Man of Music status via a long and illustrious career as musical adapter and arranger, pianist and conductor; but with dubious qualifications as a composer of a full-length opera.

The longest piece Previn has composed, aside from Streetcar, is the 38-minute violin concerto "Anne Sophie", written for then wife Anne-Sophie Mutter in 2001. He has composed virtually no original music for voice. This is probably the most crucial clue to understanding his Streetcar: all his music for voice has been adaptations of the work of others (from Gigi, andIrma La Douce onwards) while his own original music is instrumental. It could perhaps account for the absence of sympathy for the human voice in the music of Streetcar. The opera opens with some brilliant instrumental scene and mood setting: reeds and brass dominate in a trad jazz and blues flavoured portrait of New Orleans' musical history. Nevertheless, from the moment Blanche intones the fabled opening lines: "They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and rid six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields" it seems that the composer's thought patterns ran along the lines of: hmm, soprano - high notes; and ah, baritone - okay, low notes; and took it from there.

The result is a score which skirts perilously close to monotony and not simply because so much is recitative. The orchestra, under Tom Woods, makes the most of its diverse opportunities and is tight and dynamic in the service of music that always favours the players. Stanley bellows a lot, while the character of Blanche - whose role is several times longer than 38 minutes - is mainly dull, dull, dull. It also requires Yvonne Kenny, in Opera Australia's production, to spend an uncomfortable amount of time beyond the natural glory of her range and this is distressing.

[page]

Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Yvonne KennyLuckily for the production, Kenny is one of the finest actresses on the operatic stage and, because the opera is so firmly rooted in the play, Blanche requires her interpreter to act more consistently and more effectively than to sing (anything of interest, that is, the hours and hours of recitative are almost like dialogue in the end). The result is touching and dramatic as Kenny trips the dark fantastic on the way to Blanche's undoing. It is a sustained, subtle and effective performance as she moves from imperious yet fearful: "I'm not going to put up in a hotel. I've got to be near you, Stella. I've got to be with people, I can't be alone ..."; to quietly unhinged as she takes to soaking in "a nice hot tub" ostensibly for her nerves, yet anyone even vaguely aware of Lady Macbeth's psychopathology would wonder what she's trying to wash away.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Kenny's performance is in telling contrast to that of Renee Fleming, who created the role in San Francisco. It's available on DVD and reveals why the American diva was praised for her vocal performance but not for her dramatic portrayal of Blanche: great though she is, Fleming is not a notable actress and Blanche absolutely has to be acted.

Stuart Skelton as Mitch ("the Karl Malden role", as someone inevitably said) and Antoinette Halloran's Stella are better served by their music, which is cast on a more lyrical and human level. Dominica Matthews as nosy upstairs neighbour Eunice Hubble also does well both as a singer and actress and Catherine Carby makes the most of her five minutes of sinister work as the wandering Mexican streetseller of funerary flowers (the music is reminiscent of the real thing and therefore effective). Angus Wood has a nice moment as a young man who nearly falls for Blanche and the rest of the cast is also fine.

Teddy Tahu Rhodes has sung Stanley in two other productions overseas and clearly relishes the many opportunities this one gives him to show off his cut and buffed six-pack and pecs and ability to turn a torn vest into a sex accessory. Tahu Rhodes looks magnificent (if you fancy a bit of rough) and has a terrific voice but it's hard to get beyond the sense of a man "playing" at being hot, sweaty and crude ...

Nevertheless, that the performances and overall flow of the production are, in the main, fine is down to director Bruce Beresford, working on a complex yet economical and simple set (John Stoddart with lighting by Nigel Levings). It's a revolve featuring the three key areas of the Elysian Fields apartment: front yard, kitchen and bedroom - Beresford focuses his players in effective groups and movements. A nod to the movies comes from the mistily projected images (by Michael Gruchy), on a scrim and on the building, which evoke period New Orleans life and the ghostly façade of Belle Reve.

And Belle Reve - beautiful dream - is really he streetcar begins and ends for Blanche. As she is led away tenderly by the nice doctor from the funny farm telling him quietly and famously that she has always depended on the kindness of strangers, the lines that echo - tragically - in the minds are those she uttered a while before:

"Real? Who wants real? I want magic. That's what I try to give people."

 

Subscribe

Get all the content of the week delivered straight to your inbox!

Register to Comment
Reset your Password
Registration Login
Registration