“I don’t want realism. I want magic!” cries Blanche DuBois. The Curve’s new director, Nikolai Foster, tries to give us both in a production that offers none of the radical reinventions of Benedict Andrews’ or Secret Theatre’s recent revivals, but which undoubtedly captures the discordant jazziness of a world in flux. Fairy lights drip like Spanish moss, creating an air of enchantment. But like so much in Tennessee Williams’ emotionally translucent play, appearances are deceptive. These fairy lights serve only to illuminate the truths that Blanche wants to keep hidden.
There are good ideas here, not least in the way that Foster and the designer Michael Taylor create a faded elegance, mixed with a buzzy sense of a restless postwar world in which old certainties are being brushed aside by new energies. Stewart Clarke’s Stanley, a riveting mix of vengeful, brutish energy and little boy bully, knows he’s going to be king of the new world. As well as the sexual charge between them, that is part of his charm for Dakota Blue Richards’ Stella, who, by choosing Stanley, has reinvented herself for the second half of the 20th century. Blanche, meanwhile, still clings to the shackles of the past.
Clarke and Richards are terrific, but like everyone in the cast, they are fighting a savagely unforgiving acoustic in the studio, which swallows the sound up. When the performers are on one side of the stage, they can’t be heard on the other side of the auditorium. An overlaid soundtrack doesn’t help one jot.
Charlie Brooks makes us see the dreamy girl Blanche once was, before life, vanity, sexual rejection and her penchants for alcohol and young men all took their toll. But the acoustic combined with an impenetrable accent and a tendency to gabble mean that, while we see this Blanche, we don’t hear enough of her. It’s a pity, because it would make the battle between Blanche and Stanley compelling – even though it’s clear from the moment that Blanche mistakenly puts a flirtatious hand on Stanley’s wrist that she’s underestimated the enemy.
Undoubtedly, the youthfulness of the cast adds to the sense of the war between the old world and the new. Patrick Knowles’s fine Mitch is not the middle-aged mouse of tradition but a still vigorous young man looking for his own opportunities.
The production tips into flamboyant gothic excess, but there’s no doubting the power of the final moments: as Blanche walks with perilous dignity towards her fate, nobody can bear to look at her or each other. They know the future belongs to them. Somebody has to pay the price.
- At Curve theatre, Leicester, until 7 November. Box office: 0116-242 3595.
