Halfway Out: Why I Walked Out of Theatre Calgary's 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

Theatre Calgary is staging a Streetcar Named Desire at the Max Bell Theatre from January 28th to February 23rd. I usually enjoy getting into an exegesis of a play's themes, its relevance to our contemporary anxieties, and the cultural and philosophical impact of the work on its audiences. Not today. The reason is simple, the staging was sterile, hackneyed and saturated with tiresome performative cliches. I can engage in no sustained analysis of the themes, because there is no inspiration, not even a scintilla of inner movement was experienced during my viewing. Can I render a final numerical rating? No, that would be unfair, I walked out in the interval. There was nothing interesting enough in the production, for me, to instigate thought, reflection or cultural attention.

Sure, at a broad level of analytical exploration the play explores class anxieties, primal sexuality, existential notions of 'bad faith', the otherness of women, the inability of human desire to create the conditions for its own fulfilment, Stanley being an embodiment of post-war America's feral power, Blanche as the representation of the annihilation of an Aristocratic southern America and Stanley also being emblematic of the ascendancy of cultural pragmatism in the US. Stanley's invocation of the Napoleonic code is emblematic of legal realism, he sees the law in a self-serving way, true to the US way of doing things, the philosophical complexities of the law (seen in Europe or other common law jurisdictions) are substituted for the social imperatives of the moment. Legal reasoning bends to fit socio-economic conditions, and not the other way around. We can go on and on, at an abstract level, about how thematically potent the play is, but the whole point of theatre is to provoke the human imagination, otherwise why would we show up? We are obviously looking for something, we are in search of presence, volatility, confrontation - call it whatever you will, without these elements - a play like this is just an appendage to a night out, and that is quite alright, if that is what you want - if you are looking for something else then it is not alright, actually, it is far from alright.

The play is riddled with endlessly interesting themes - and it is certainly not the job of a production to represent all those themes, that is certainly impossible, but a production should be designed to inspire communal imagination. This production does nothing of the sort - it is a thematically listless outing, relying on exhausted tropes to put up a play the same way it has been put up everywhere (minus the addition of music in this play which was an excellent feature). Does this production have anything unique to offer? No, a resounding and emphatic no. The problem is if we must revert to the historical way of doing things, i.e. staging this play the exact same way it is staged everywhere, then one had better be sure they have the performative scale to pull it off. Again, this will not be found in this production, though the talent of the actors cannot be denied, they are playing characters that embody the cosmic tempestuousness of a Hamlet, Lady Macbeth or King Lear, the characters in a Streetcar Named Desire are behemoths, mythic in scope and profound in energetic resonance, requiring staggering performative breadth to even begin to graze the outer edges of their volatile essence. The actors tried hard, but they are found wanting in almost every scene of the first half, the chemistry between them was tepid, Blanche's character is monotonous, and the occult-like complexity of her character is represented by performative tropes that flatten her into a two-dimensional figure. Stanley and Stella too were thoroughly uninspiring, lacking the human depth that should make these characters intriguing. Instead, they merely displayed competent mechanical-acting skills (critiqued by the Russian acting theoretician, Konstantin Stanislavski, as being devoid of truth, spontaneity and emotional profundity) without any artistic distinction. I couldn't help thinking in between that maybe the Meisner technique (approach to acting that puts a premium on spontaneous and truthful reactions through repetitive exercises, designed to develop responsive connection between actors) would have sorted some of the stagey-ness out. There was a disjunction between the lines and the performance, no real embrace of the spontaneous and chaotic nature of the drama, this is why the lines feel pre-rehearsed rather than lived. There was no semblance of any rawness, and no visceral encounter with the enigmatic wellsprings that these characters are supposed to draw their emotional energy from. Blanche tries, but whatever is tried is overdone, far, far too overdone in the first half - I saw less of the character and more of someone who wanted to show us the character- putting me off the possibility of really investing anything in that character. Sheldon Elter as Harold Mitchell perhaps came the closest to being authentic in the first half, I shot up in my seat during one of his stretches with Blanche, he tapped into something momentarily ethereal, something really vulnerable. For a few minutes, we saw something of his character possess the stage and start to speak to us, for those few minutes one could believe in the premise of the world we were being asked to enter. Outside of that scene? Nothing could be found, it was lines, lines, lines all the way down. Even the raw and powerful vocals of Katelyn Morishita could not save the drama from sinking into an abyss of inanition.

Whatever I saw of the first half suggested a creative vision that was willing to take no risks, and I have often said in my previous reviews, that this is a fatalistic conception of the theatre, what Peter Brooke (British director) called the 'deadly theatre' - one that is a slave to tired conventions, and one that is risk averse. Only the vacuous can survive in the deadly theatre, and only the artistically lifeless could survive in this production. This is the danger of style over substance, unless the creative vision truly owns and works with the vulnerabilities of the performative talent in a play, it risks becoming a lifeless imitation of received ideas. Without owning the work and breathing idiosyncratic life into it, thereby creating one's own performative standards- warts and all, one denies the audience the privilege of a dramatic encounter - engage in imitation and a play always runs the risk of perishing by someone else's sword. Thats why this production is dead on arrival.

Do I regret walking out? No, I am glad I did. It was not a lapse of patience to leave, it was a tacit indictment for a production that thoroughly defanged the first half of the play, reducing its brutal and edgy tumult to artistic inertia and mechanical performativity.

Good points - The production values were great - the lighting and the sound was on point - Katelyn Morishita, Daniel Briere, and the band were great with the music. Brian Dudkiewicz & Jessica Oostergo were stellar for the set and the costumes.

Final Rating - No Rating

P.S. Before I get any flak for walking out in between, do remember that I am not a professional reviewer, I have no institutional obligation to finish watching a play if I have started it (especially if I pay for my own ticket, and receive no remuneration for issuing reviews). This is after all the whole bent of these reflections/reviews, they are personal and subjective reflections, this approach is for those who read this blog seeking an authentic perspective.