Beast v. Beauty

By T.E.K.

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE by TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

A Streetcar Named Desire is 25 years old, and it might cogently be argued that it ranks first among all plays written anywhere during that time. Like all great works of art, it has been internalized. It is part of our sensibility, part of the way in which we see, feel, know and think about life.

The play's leading characters, Stanley Kowalski and Blanche du Bois, symbolize the eternal struggle of earthy reality v. the romantic imagination, bestiality v. beauty. Of course, the symbols would possess little dramatic strength if the two characters were not vivid flesh-and-blood people. For the play to achieve its maximum emotional impact, much depends on a balance of forces and an electric tension between Stanley and Blanche. The Lincoln Center Repertory Theater revival is slightly, but naggingly off balance.

Inevitably, any actor who plays Kowalski has to cope with the memory of Marlon Brando in the original production. Brando not only exuded animal magnetism but also conveyed the inarticulate dignity of an animal. In the current production, James Farentino seems like a deliberate lowbrow, a slob who relishes being a slob. He comes across as meanspirited, and the scene in which he ravishes Blanche becomes a sordid rape instead of the elemental encounter implied by "We've had this date with each other from the beginning."

He is not helped very much by Rosemary Harris, whose Blanche is not coquettish enough to suggest any sexual chemistry. She seems too exclusively fanciful ever to be emotionally vulnerable. Blanche's sister Stella (Patricia Conolly) is born to the Southern man or, all right, but we have to take her visceral need for Husband Stanley on faith. Only Philip Bosco gives a performance of perfect pitch, as the shy wooer, "Mitch," who almost marries Blanche until Stanley blurts out the story of her promiscuous past.

sb T.E.K.

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