Playwright: Tennessee Williams. At: Writers Theatre, 376 Park, Glencoe. Phone: 847-242-6000; $40-$60. Runs through: July 11
In one of Bertolt Brecht's plays, a woman striving for high moral standards is forced to adopt a less-circumspect alter-ego in order to survive in a harsh world. Tennessee Williams' tragic heroine likewise claims to advocate "old-fashioned ideals," even as she drowns her forays into earthy necessity with alcohol and amnesia. Certainly, her conflicts make her untrustworthy, but is she a hypocrite to be reviled, or is she cornered prey deserving of pity? And have you ever stopped to consider that question in your previous viewings of this oft-revived potboiler?
David Cromer has forged his reputation on discovering hitherto-ignored dimensions in familiareven hackneyedAmerican classics, and his interpretation of this steamy southern-gothic drama is no exception. Among his innovative emendations are physicalized manifestations ( many hearkening to Williams' original vision, but since lost to restricted budgets and imaginations ) of the distraught Blanche's retreat into fantasy: we see, with our own eyes, the ghosts that haunt her, hear the music that invades her consciousness, observe her fellow human beings take on the shapes of blurred and indistinct monsters ( the symbolic flower-seller is portrayed as a Max Ernst-like apparition ) as the demons that beset her escalate their affliction. In the climactic rape scene, her surrender is not to the cruel Stanley so much as it is to the suicidal phantom lover who now beckons her from the grave.
Our awareness of these subtexts is enhanced by the technical team of Collette Pollard, Heather Gilbert, Janice Pytel, Claudia Anderson, and Josh Schmidt, who immerse us in the Babylonian ambience of New Orleans' French Quarter. Cromer, a director whose midas touch has earned artists' unwavering trust, has carefully instructed his ensemble to play text, not attitude, and in doing so, render every word important. Actors long a mainstay on the storefront circuitNatasha Lowe as the doomed Blanche, real-life newlyweds Matt Hawkins and Stacy Stoltz as Stanley and Stella, Danny McCarthy as the repressed Mitchdeliver breakthrough performances to create personae free of academic cliché. And if their step-by-step approach to the 60-year-old script stretches its running time to three hours ( with two intermissions ) , the fresh and intimate insights offered us is sufficient reward for our patience.