Managed to watch the entirety of the National Theatre production of Streetcar starring (and I use the word advisedly) Gillian Anderson. Did so by watching just a couple of scenes at a time, so didn't quite get the flow of it all. But that might have been a good thing since it was so astonishingly intense that keeping some distance was sort of healthy in its way. When I watched the final scene today it pretty much broke me up completely. I suppose Ms Anderson was largely to blame: she is so sensationally good that it's impossible for me to imagine a world in which she isn't Blanche Dubois, if you see what I mean.
Just one small example. Her drunkenness, broadly speaking increasing from scene to scene, is note perfect. When Blanche is hammered out of her head in Scene 10 (very difficult to watch, but impossible to turn away from) she just gets every detail of extreme alcoholism right. Depressingly ugly and distressing. It was like watching my sister at her very worst. Just devastating.
To be honest her performance is so strong in its weakness and pain and vulnerability that she blows Ben Foster's Stanley off the stage. But that works so well. This isn't a Stanley with the animal power of Brando. In some ways he's also deeply insecure, a reading that had never quite occurred to me before, but fully realised, as it is in this production, it just feels right.
Not sure I'm looking forward to watching the whole thing in one sitting when we screen it for the kids, simply because I know how overwhelming that's going to feel.
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