In 1998, Glenne Headly played Blanche DuBois for a BBC Radio 3 production of Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire. Her performance reminded me that Williams, when in Britain in 1979, said on Radio 4’s Start the Week that we shouldn’t worry too much about Blanche. She would have talked her way out of the state institution in 20 minutes.
Nineteen years later, Headly seemed to be taking this as a note. As she ran rings around the other characters, she had me laughing nearly to the end. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that Blanche, though vulnerable, is cleverer than the others.
