DanceFeaturedLondonReview

A Streetcar Named Desire – Sadler’s Wells. London

Reviewer: Maryam Philpott

Choreographer: Annabelle Lopez Ochoa

Director: Nancy Meckler

The physicality of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is ideally suited to dance with its rhythms of longing and deeply ingrained feminine romanticism that, when done well, conflict with the bodily experience of the central character. Reviving its 2012 adaptation, Scottish Ballet returns to Sadler’s Wells with a new production directed by Nancy Meckler with original choreography by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, who reorders the story slightly to the detriment of the themes of disguise and self-deception that moor Williams’ vibrant play. But with a running time of under two hours, it ignites the intimacy of the dance.

Following the death of her young spouse, Blanche Dubois is hounded out of town and decides to visit her sister Stella and husband Stanley in New Orleans. But their passionate marriage is challenged by the arrival of Blanche whose simpering romanticism offends Stanley’s overt machismo. And as Blanche inveigles her way into the household, an inevitable clash of wills results.

The only significant issue with Lopez Ochoa’s story is the reshaping of Williams’s piece that is told in chronological order, taking the flashbacks and fantasy that are positioned to support audience and Stanley’s understanding of Blanche’s delusion and the empathy that runs through the character’s psychology, and bringing them forward as opening backstory. By placing these as the preamble to Blanche’s arrival it robs the story of both the girlish façade that she deliberately adopts as part of her projection of idealised love and the drama of the revelation of her physical desires in which the layers of her dream are stripped away to reveal a brutal and stark truth that fuels the dramatic climax of the story.

But it is a small quibble in an approach that delivers much satisfaction in its place with a clarity of storytelling that finds a strong expression through Lopez Ochoa’s choreographic choices. It begins with the soft lightness of young love in which Meckler’s production, designed by Nicola Turner, captures the provincialism of Blanche’s hometown and the all-American goodness slowly tainted by the events of Blanche’s youth and instigated by a strong theatrical moment when the backdrop of Blanche’s home, Belle Reve, literally crumbles. This contrasts beautifully with the sultry urban landscape filled with streetcar sounds, jazz and dancers in silky slip dresses, evoking the swirling morality and yearning of the city.

This production understands and presents the psychology of Williams’ play well, merging between Blanche’s daily experience, the memories that haunt her and the refuge she takes first in ideas of her beauty and then in alcohol, but it is also deeply sympathetic to her experience of youthful tragedy and the inability to reconcile the two sides of her physical self. And although this is a greatly reduced version of A Streetcar Named Desire, there is considerable attention to detail in the accents used throughout the show including bare lightbulbs which become a feature of Turner’s design and excerpts from Paper Moon that haunt Peter Salem’s evocative score that has its tender and vibrant moments.

Danced by Marge Hendrick, Blanche feels like Williams’ original creation; skittish and full of longing, hoping for true love but plagued by her rapacious desires while Evan London’s Stanley prowls the stage waiting for their date with destiny. When the explosion finally comes, the destruction of hope and desire is powerfully played.

Runs until19 May 2024

The Reviews Hub Score:

Intimacy ignited

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The Reviews Hub - London

The Reviews Hub London is under the editorship of Richard Maguire. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.

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