[NEohioPAL] Review of "A Streetcar Named Desire" at Mamai Theatre Company

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

Mamaí’s ‘Streetcar’ is stellar despite understated STELLAAAA!!! 



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics





So iconic is the scream “Stella!  STELLAAAA!!!” from Tennessee Williams’ 1948 Pulitzer Prize-winning play “A Streetcar Named Desire” that the highlight of each annual meeting of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival is the “Stanley and Stella Kowalski Shouting Contest.” 



Affectionately known as the “Stell-off,” the competition reenacts the torrid scene early in the play in which working class Stanley – the brutish tormentor of his visiting Southern belle sister-in-law Blanche DuBois – remorsefully shouts for his pregnant wife Stella to return after she was slapped during his drunken tantrum.  



Judges use the raw, primal performance turned in by Marlon Brando during the show’s Broadway premiere and, more notably, in the classic 1951 film adaptation as their benchmark. 



Entire productions of the play can be similarly evaluated, for Stanley’s scream serves as an early indicator of an actor’s insight into this key character’s mindset, defines the tenor of his confrontations with the intrusive and deeply troubled Blanche, and gives shape to his relationship with the highly compromised Stella.  It could be argued that the scream is also a viable barometer of a director’s approach to the emotional truths that lie between it and other outbursts.



In the current Mamaí staging of “Streetcar,” Jason Kaufman’s scream is a comparatively understated affair that is more inebriated anger than agony and more hurt pride than passion.  It seems inspired by Stanley’s want and desire rather than his need and desperation.  And so does this production under Mitchell Fields’ direction



For the rest of this review, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/
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