David Fox and Cameron Kelsall review Rebecca Frecknall’s new staging of A Streetcar Named Desire at BAM, “a gripping realization that makes new a play many of us feel we know inside out.”
If The Night of the Iguana is not exactly a day at the beach, it’s not really the dark night of the soul it should be, either.
We shared a feeling that writing about The Fugitive Kind was a date with destiny.
Nearly 70 years after its debut, A Streetcar Named Desire remains the greatest stage-to-screen adaptation of all time.
This made-for-network version is surprisingly provocative and creative for its time. It’s not an unqualified success, but in terms of understanding the play as a whole, it’s a necessary part of the conversation.
Perhaps the idea here is to give Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play a renewed sense of visceral power that speaks to a younger audience? Maybe, but it doesn’t speak to me.
Although Kim Stanley’s big-screen appearances were rare—four major film roles, plus the uncredited narration in To Kill a Mockingbird—she was the leading lady of television drama’s “Golden Age.”
What we see here from Strasberg is frustratingly literal and drably conventional—it looks to me like he’s channeling a lot of received wisdom about how Chekhov should be staged and bringing almost nothing of his own to the process.
Rest in peace, dear Albert.
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