Tennessee Williams (1911–1983)

The story of a Southern belle who finds herself down on her luck and forced to live with her sister and her sister's working class husband. Blanche is a classic character, a troubled woman with a secret past who tries to make a new life for herself, but finds that she can't leave her old self behind. There's no escaping a reputation, especially when those you must rely on are scoundrels. This script manages to capture the sense of futility in life, and also provides a grim picture of the show more cost of pride, lust, anger, and prudery, especially when they meet heat on. It's difficult to find a truly sympathetic character among this lot, and Williams paints a clear picture of people who continue to destroy each other and themselves, and jump back into self-destruction with a relish. This script retains its power even all these decades after the fact because the characters and the situations are recognizable, perhaps even universal. show less

A collection of short stories exhibiting Williams' genius for creating drama with memorable characters, sexual electricity and atmosphere. I am not a fan of reading plays, but the availability of performances of Williams' work to watch over and over would be reason enough for me to sustain a video service subscription of whatever sort indefinitely. These short stories, published in 1967 during Williams' long depression, are frequently brilliant, often heart-breaking, occasionally bizarre and show more macabre. Two of the selections, "A Girl Made of Glass'" and "The Night of the Iguana" tell stories previously dramatised. Other powerful selections include the title story, in which a former boxer turned hustler finds his inner spark, just a bit too late; and "Desire and the Black Masseur", one of those that takes a turn to the very very dark side. Remarkably, there is even a flash or two of humor in the final piece, "Yellow Bird", before it takes off into outright fantasy. One or two of these stories left me a bit at a loss, but after completing the entire collection, I think I will go back and reread those, as I may just possibly have missed something, given the quality and impact of the rest.
Review written in 2014 show less

Stepping off a streetcar run by the Desire line in New Orleans, the flighty Southern belle Blanche DuBois steps into the lives of her sister Stella and her primally masculine, roughneck husband Stanley, who live in a small, two-room apartment in an unpromising district of the city. What follows is a series of entertaining sparks from Tennessee Williams' carefully-crafted tinderbox.

There might not be any deeper theme to Williams' play, beyond the idea that people "needn't [be] cruel to show more someone alone" (pg. 81) – an irony brought home by the play's famous line, delivered by Blanche, that she has "always depended on the kindness of strangers" (pg. 107). Said by Blanche at a moment in the play when she has been treated cruelly – and needlessly so – it throws into tragically harsh light the idea that, with such a worldview, Blanche was always destined to be crushed by cold reality. Her old-fashioned idea of how people should interact (even if she doesn't follow it herself) comes up against the brute reality-check of Stanley Kowalski. And it's not that Stanley is particularly villainous. Blanche was always eventually going to cross paths with someone who would provide this reality-check.

There are things to discuss then, but less in theme and more in how the characters interact. I didn't find Blanche as sympathetic as many others appear to, and I thought the real victim of the story was Stella, caught between her overpowering and high-maintenance sister Blanche on one hand and her abusive husband Stanley on the other. I would have liked the play to focus more on the compromises Stella makes than the traps that Blanche wilfully falls into. The question of why women like Stella stay with men like Stanley is an interesting one, but one that the play does not take the opportunity to address – and one which hasn't, as far as I am aware, really been addressed in commentary on the play. Stanley has become rooted in popular culture as a smouldering and desirable bad boy, epitomised in his famous portrayal by Marlon Brando, and while this might be great for the play's popularity it distracts from the real implications of Stanley. Mostly, the orthodox ruling on the play has been that Stanley is a predatory male, a brute and a villain, and that Blanche and Stella are innocent birds caught in his trap – while simultaneously granting us licence to swoon over him when shirtless (a hypocrisy also found in modern depictions of Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice). Such an orthodoxy denies the two women characters the agency they display on every page – it is a Blanche-like fiction obscuring the cold realism the man provides.

This, however, is a fault in how we have absorbed the play into our popular culture, not with Williams' play itself. Williams himself provides us with the nuance in how his characters interact, and it is up to us to choose how to interpret that. If a deeper theme isn't penetrated, Williams nevertheless provides greater scope and grandeur by staging his scenes evocatively, and in how naturally his dialogue comes across. My ultimate impression of A Streetcar Named Desire was as something of a high-class soap opera; too well-made to be dismissed as frivolous, and with a few trappings that make it appear grand, but not deep enough to provide a lasting fascination either. show less

Read this in a safe place, and give yourself time to rest between scenes! It's wound so tight, and springs so hard, it can take the wind out of you. The main characters - Blanche and Stanley - will be imprinted in my memory for a long time. Blanche reminds me a lot of Laura in the Glass Managerie, but Williams develops the character type more in this play. She's just so broken and disconnected with reality that you can't help feeling deep sympathy and understanding, even when she's at her show more most fake and disgusting. On the other hand, Stanley is mainly just a one-dimensional brute. I guess you can justify his anger and vindictiveness a little if you consider the class context; Blanche really sets him off by acting so superior and denigrating him as a "Polack" when she is the one that's in desperate need. The fallen southern aristocrat who can't come to terms with her new position vs. the virile son of an immigrant who has married "class" but can't seem to live up to it. The other chartacters are mostly just spineless - Blanche's sister Stella and Stanley's friend Mitch. What a wonderful bunch Tennessee Williams comes up with! I've got to see the film version with Marlon Brando. show less