IT IS 75 YEARS since Tennessee Williams’s Streetcar Named Desire first trundled out of the backyards of New Orleans onto stages and exam syllabuses worldwide. Its freight of lust, anger, prejudice and the seductive, destructive power of delusion turned out to be winning combination.
The play’s dissonant chords resonate in a century looking afresh at the power balance between men and women and the tensions of indigenous and new communities. The paradox of Streetcar is that this “stagiest” of works in its 1940s melee of sex, suicide and southern discomfort, maps onto America’s contemporary political divides.
There’s not much question as to which other thuggish man-child Stanley Kowalski would have voted for over the last few years and Blanche DuBois would most certainly have complained about the pulling down of…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2023