Donmar Warehouse 2009

Donmar Warehouse Theatre

Donmar, London

23 July-3 October 2009

Director: Rob Ashford
Designer: Christopher Oram
Lighting: Neil Austin
Sound: Adam Cork






Christopher Oram's loftily elegant New Orleans set makes much use of wrought iron and features a particularly glamorous spiral fire escape. Although the Donmar offers airy vertical space, the set still manages to be appropriately claustrophobic [...] One of [Ashford's] most successful innovations is in allowing Blanche to see visions of her young husband, her teenage sweetheart - a homosexual who shot himself. He appears, in evening dress, with his older lover and the sightings have the quality of awkward snapshots...
Kate Kellaway, The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/aug/02/streetcar-named-desire-review


The production doesn't paper over the fact that Stanley commits a brutal crime and Blanche is his victim. Weisz's repeated cries, as flutteringly helpless [...] The last line of the play [is] actually a throwaway remark by one of Stanley's poker buddies: "The game is seven-card stud." The pun must be intentional—this is a game that the stud has won and the demented, discarded Blanche has devastatingly lost.  Weisz understands Blanche's spiritual longing, and so does the director, who brings down the curtain on the line, "Sometimes—there's God—so quickly!"

Huntley Dent, The Berkshire Review
http://berkshirereview.net/2009/08/streetcar-named-desire-tennessee-williams-donmar-warehouse-london/