A Streetcar Named Desire at the Maidment Theatre

By SUSAN BUDD

This magnificently theatrical play shows Tennessee Williams at the height of his powers. The battle between brutish Stanley Kowalski and the fading butterfly, Blanche Dubois, is an uneven contest, but dramatic tension never falters on the inexorable path to tragedy.

As the two embody the clash between the carnal and the spiritual, that same dichotomy exists within Blanche's own frail body and psyche. She yearns for the first pure, and probably unconsummated, love that she unwittingly destroyed, but in her search to recreate it falls continually into the loveless sexual mire.

In a subtle, beautifully nuanced performance, Elizabeth Hawthorne creates a glittering, fluttering but surprisingly assertive woman, initially unafraid to challenge her muscle-bound brother-in-law, Stanley.

Her constant nervous movement is contrasted by her sister's sensual stillness. As Stella, Danielle Cormack exudes a loving, lush sexuality that tames and humanises Stanley, if only briefly, when he kneels to beg her forgiveness after a violent spat. Ironically, their love at times reaches the sublimity for which Blanche so desperately searches.

Kevin Smith's boyish Stanley is more bad-tempered than bestial as he singlemindedly protects his woman and his patch from Blanche's dangerous dreams of southern gentility and romance. The brutality of his character is undermined in the climactic rape scene, which, in Simon Prast's production, is ritualised with Blanche lying, crucified, on the bed.

The wash of red light and cacophonous sounds that presumably represent Blanche's madness detract from the bestiality of the act, serving to mitigate and distance its horror.

As the gentle giant, Mitch, who represents Blanche's only hope of escape, Michael Lawrence gives a moving portrayal of a man with a "capacity for devotion" that is corrupted by Stanley and his own prejudices.

Tracy Grant's set is lovely, hung with gauzy panels lit with soft lavender and aqua, forming a dreamy limbo into which Blanche slowly sinks on her arrival. In its height and cool elegance, however, it does not conjure up the claustrophobia of life in a cramped, squalid two-room tenement in the Quarter of New Orleans over a long, hot summer.