Get in Line to Catch Intiman's Streetcar

At Intiman, director Sheila Daniels has resisted the lure of any Streetcar iconography--these are people-sized people, despite the characters' tendency to see each other as larger-than-life polar contradictions, Beauty vs. the Beast. (Missteps are a few slow-motion entrances, and a tendency to hurry past the violence, when more time would let it sicken the atmosphere.)

Blanche DuBois, the Mary Kay Letourneau of her day, can be heedlessly critical, snobbish, and alcoholic but that doesn't mean her criticism is always unfounded (or keep her from being a hyprocrite). Stanley Kowalski can be a foul-mouthed, mean drunk who keeps Stella sedated with sex and child-bearing, but that doesn't keep him from loving her (or from jealously noticing how Blanche uses Stella, who was previously solely devoted to him). In fact, for all the Blanche/Stanley sexual chemistry fireworks, it's worth noting that they're fighting over who gets Stella.

As Blanche, Angela Pierce pulls those internal contradictions together into a woman who is a too much a vehicle for them--her Blanche enjoys being in her own play, even if it is exhausting being the star, director, and lighting and set designer. Canny, sweet, over-bearing, cutting, girlish, seductive, and desperate: these are like costume-changes for Pierce. She's masterful at Blanche's moods, and her drunken rambling is exactly the right blend of tedious self-indulgence and liquor-fueled escapism.

As Stanley, Jonno Roberts isn't all that brutish--he doesn't have the size or presence to pull that visceral dominance off. He is "common," to use Blanche's word, and a bully who can't seem to take off his sergeant stripes. Roberts has a toothy grin, and struts around trying to look bigger than he is. It makes sense that he'd use Stella as a whipping boy--but Roberts also commits fully to Stanley's contrite self-loathing.

We were delighted to see Chelsey Rives as Stella--she caught the angle on Stella's relationship with her sister (i.e., being the competent, "not crazy" one) and her dawning awareness that Stanley may be a permanently loose cannon. Tim True, as Mitch, the schlub that Blanche decides to wrap around her finger, gives a commanding performance by being the opposite of commanding. That character is not given a lot to do, but is also pivotal--True comes to life for that moment, bubbling over into an irrelevant, inappropriate "she likes me" show-off, then banking down into a sullen stew of sexual frustration and hurt pride.

We'd be skimping if we closed without mentioning the bluesy jazz score by Jose J. Gonzales (who also plays Pablo Gonzales, one of Stanley's poker buddies), but we've also been fans of and friends with Jose for many years, so take our rave with that grain of salt. Despite being a cool, Thelonious-style, chord-thumping jazz musician in his gig-playing life, Jose has dug into a muddy New Orleans blues for this score, which mostly slops and washes around the edges of the stage--except for a dramatic, clawing-upward phrase created for Blanche that a French-Quarter Benjamin Britten might have written. It's almost too much, but in that, it's just like Blanche.