Although A Streetcar Named Desire hasn’t fared well on Broadway—if anyone even remembers botched revivals like the 2005 disaster with Natasha Richardson and John C. Reilly and stillborn 1992 production with Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin—things have been different in Brooklyn, where in 2009 a fresh take on Tennessee Williams’ classic drama at BAM gave it back its poetry and poignancy: anchored by a surprisingly unmannered Cate Blanchett as Blanche Dubois and directed with unadorned realism by Liv Ullmann, the Sydney Theatre Company production was as good a Streetcar as could be wished for.

 

Now, London’s Almeida Theatre stops at BAM with its Streetcar, directed with arrogant assurance by Rebecca Frecknall, whose deconstruction of Williams’ familiar drama has some interesting detours but is burdened by too much distracting, unnecessary gimmickry. 

 

Heading her mostly capable cast and making his American theater debut, current heartthrob Paul Mescal plays Stanley Kowalski intelligently, letting us see the humor as well as the rage of this self-styled “Pole” (not “Polack,” as he corrects Blanche) who loves his wife Stella fiercely—so much so that he at times lets his passions spill over into brutishness and violence. 

 

As Stella, Blanche’s younger sister, Anjana Vasan is a sympathetic presence. And at the performance I attended, a solid Eduardo Ackerman subbed for Dwane Walcott as Stanley’s poker-playing buddy Mitch, who is sweet on Blanche until things go sour. But things get problematic with Patsy Ferran’s Blanche, a strangely off-putting performance that has little of Williams’ poetry and a surfeit of nervous energy. 

 

Most damaging, however, is that Ferran and Mescal have little chemistry together; at one point, Mescal gets on all fours and prowls around like a literal beast to try and underline the feral attraction between these memorably mismatched characters. It doesn’t really work.

 

Frecknall seems to sense this; she all but eclipses Stanley and Blanche’s relationship with busy stage business. Madeleine Girling’s set, a square wooden platform with a walkway surrounding it, resembles a boxing ring sans ropes. When actors are not in a scene, they mill around and hand props to those performing, like trainers giving the boxers a towel or a bottle of water during a match. Lee Curran’s lighting and Peter Rice’s sound design strongly contribute to the claustrophobic atmosphere.

 

Occasionally, the cast breaks into stylized dance moves that aren’t integrated enough to be effective—only the movements of the cast’s male actors closely surrounding Blanche when Stanley rapes her is memorable. And although Williams asks for a “blue piano” in his stage directions, Frecknall provides music that almost entirely comprises a drummer on a second tier above the stage (the talented Tom Penn, who also plays the doctor in the final scene) pounding away throughout, needlessly underscoring the dramatic beats, so to speak. And a repeated ghostly image of Blanche’s dead first husband needlessly clutters her monologues without any additional illumination.

 

One thing this Streetcar shares with the superior Blanchett/Ullmann production is a misconceived ending. In the 2009 Sydney Theatre staging’s biggest misstep, Blanchett rode Williams’ poetry too hard and director Ullmann allowed Blanche the indignity of being led away while not properly dressed. 

 

Here, Frecknall turns what should be a shattering ending into mush, the mass of performers onstage obscuring Blanche’s final tragedy—it misses the theatrical magic that Williams’ most indelible creation always yearned for.