Mia Blake as Blanche DuBois in Silo Theatre's A Streetcar Named Desire.
Mia Blake as Blanche DuBois in Silo Theatre's A Streetcar Named Desire.
Silo celebrates its 20th anniversary with an edgy re-interpretation of the play that established Tennessee Williams as one of the great writers of the modernist era.
Among its many attributes A Streetcar Named Desire has an abundance of richly drawn characters who provide the opportunity and challenge that actors dreamof.
Mia Blake seizes the plum role of Blanche with panache and captures the ambiguities and evasions that make the play so enthralling. She appears to be constantly dragging herself from the brink of a nervous breakdown as she summons the composure to face her adversaries with wit, charm and combative energy.
It is in Blanche's finely choreographed duels with other characters that the production really comes to life.
Morgana O'Reilly imbues Stella with understated self-assurance and her interactions with sister Blanche deliver the plays more tender moments. Mark Ruka displays superb comic timing as he allows himself to become the fascinated and bewildered object of Blanche's outrageously flirtatious seduction. Ryan O'Kane, as Stella's husband, Stanley, establishes a physical presence that gives a visceral sense of danger to his explosive confrontation with his sister-in-law.
Shane Bosher's direction is bold and coherent though at times the script's delicate lyricism is overwhelmed by thick accents and some expansive interpretations of William's subtlety suggestive stage directions.
John Verryt's set proves well suited to Stanley's propensity for smashing things and as the action progresses becomes an appropriately shambolic wasteland.
The play offers a finely balanced contest between what is and what ought to be but the director's interpretation tilts so heavily towards a brutish, nihilistic vision of reality that Blanche's longing for a kinder world seems little more than a neurotic delusion.
Thatre review
What: A Streetcar Named Desire Where & When: Q Theatre, Rangatira to Sept 16 Reviewer: Paul Simei-Barton
