A Streetcar Named Desire

Theatre Bouquets 2025

Another varied year of theatre-going presents us with the usual problem of choosing what we think were the twelve best shows of the year. But once again, here they are in the order we saw them.

Vanya (National Theatre Live)

“Glides like gossamer through the cuts and thrusts of a family drama – even a scene where Scott is obliged to make love to himself unfolds like a dream…”

Dr Strangelove (National Theatre Live)

“This brilliantly-staged production is a weird hybrid – part play, part film – and at times astonishing in its sheer invention…”

Wild Rose (Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh)

“A fabulously entertaining story about ambition and acceptance, anchored by a knockout performance from Dawn Sievewright…”

Chef (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh)

“Sabrina Mahfouz’s Chef is an extraordinary play, a monologue delivered in a lyrical, almost poetic flow of startling imagery…”

Lost Lear (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh)

“Dan Colley’s beautifully-conceived script intertwines excerpts from Lear with moments in the here and now, gently but relentlessly uncovering the horrors of cognitive decline…

Alright Sunshine (Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh)

“Directed by Debbie Hannan, Cowan’s taut, almost poetic script is brought powerfully to life by Geddes’ mesmerising performance: a tour de force with real emotional heft…”

A Streetcar Named Desire (Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh)

“Eschews the victim-blaming that so often blights interpretations of this play and turns up the heat on the sweaty, malevolent scenario, so that the play’s final half makes intense, disturbing viewing…”

Common Tongue (The Studio at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh)

“A demanding monologue, Caw’s performance is flawless, at once profound and bitingly funny: the jokes delivered with all the timing and precision of a top comedian; the emotional journey intense and heartfelt…”

Little Women (Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh)

“Watching events play out, I feel transported back into the cocoon of my childhood, curled up in bed reading about these faraway adolescents and their travails…”

The Seagull (Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh)

“There’s so much to enjoy here and not just Quentin’s perfectly-judged performance as the conceited, self-aggrandising Irina, intent on making every conversation all about her…”

Wallace (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh)

“Whip-smart, caustically funny and actually pretty informative (I come out knowing a lot more about the titular Scot than I previously did), Wallace snaps from song to song and from argument to argument like the proverbial tiger on vaseline…”

Inter Alia (National Theatre Live)

“Doesn’t offer any easy answers or let anyone off the hook, but expertly straddles the fine line between trying to understand assailants without diminishing their victims…”

Susan Singfield & Philip Caveney

Theatre Bouquets 2024

It’s been an exciting year for theatre in Edinburgh, so in time-honoured tradition, here are our ten favourite productions from 2024, plus three special mentions.

The House (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh)

“Everything about this performance – the lighting, the music, the props – is exquisite and I love the piece’s grisly sense of humour, its celebration of the darkness of the human soul…”

The Giant on the Bridge (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh)

“A complex, labyrinthine piece that explores a whole range of different moods, moving from plaintive acoustic ballads to propulsive electric rock…”

Blue Beard (Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh)

“All about the seductive allure of darkness, the impulse that makes us devour murder-mysteries and glamourise the bad guys…”

The Sound Inside (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh)

“Adam Rapp’s exquisite play has all the qualities of a great novel, pulling me deeper and deeper into its labyrinthine heart, providing the audience with puzzles to solve and mysteries to ponder…”

VL (Roundabout at Summerhall, Edinburgh)

” A whip-smart comedy that also has some incisive things to say about the difficulties of adolescence and the importance of friendship…”

Summer of Harold (Assembly Checkpoint, Edinburgh)

“An hour-and-a-half of impressive theatre, with snort-out-loud humour as well as profound emotional moments…”

The State of Grace (Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh)

“Whenever I thinkI’ve got the measure of the piece, it twists in another new direction, giving fresh food for thought, breaking down the barriers that I’ve carried around in my head for years…”

A Streetcar Named Desire (Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh)

“Increasingly resembles a deranged carousel with the players caught in its unhealthy embrace, unable to get off the ride until it arrives at its ghastly destination…”

Angels in America: Part One – The Millennium Approaches (Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh)

“It’s astounding what EUTC manage to achieve with their limited budget: the final scene in particular is a coup de théâtre…”

Treasure Island (Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh)

“A must-see for the festive season – you’ll laugh, you’ll tremble, you’ll tap your feet to the jaunty jigs and reels!’

SPECIAL MENTIONS

The Little Shop of Horrors (Church Hill Theatre, Edinburgh)

Rebels and Patriots (Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh)

Weer (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh)

Susan Singfield & Philip Caveney

A Streetcar Named Desire

26/10/24

Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

It’s sometimes hard to believe that Tennessee Williams’ A Street Car Named Desire was first performed in 1947. This powerful mixture of one man’s toxic masculinity overpowering a woman’s fragile mental condition feels somehow utterly contemporary in its telling, and this perfectly-pitched adaptation by Pitlochry Festival Theatre is compelling in every scene.

Stella (Nalini Chetty) and Stanley Kowalski (Matthew Trevannion) live in a cramped, two-room apartment in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Stella is pregnant and she’s understandably taken aback when her older sister, high school teacher Blanche DuBois (Kirsty Stuart), arrives unexpectedly, lugging a massive trunk and lacking the necessary funds to pay for a hotel room. Blanche announces that, after the death of their mother, the family plantation, Belle Reve, has been ‘lost to creditors,’ and Blanche has nowhere else to turn.

Stanley is immediately suspicious about Blanche’s rambling explanation for her presence, particularly when he hears about the loss of the DuBois family property, which he has always believed he is owed a share of. When Blanche begins a tentative romance with his card-playing buddy, Mitch (Keith Macpherson), he determines to do a little snooping…

Stuart is superb in the role of Blanche, nailing the woman’s ever-shifting moods with consummate skill, one moment critical and demanding, the next coquettish and playful. Sound designer Pippa Murphy adds to her disturbed moods by overlaying scratchy soundscapes as Blanche is haunted by something terrible that happened in her youth. As the loathsome Stanley, Trevannion has a field day, strutting and bellowing around the cramped environment like a rooster, asserting his dominance over everyone who has the bad fortune to come into pecking distance. Chetty, meanwhile, navigates the turbulent waters between Blanche and Stanley, seemingly unable (and unwilling) to resist her husband’s rapacious demands. No matter how many times he attacks her, she always goes back for more.

Designer Emily James has chosen to situate the Kowalski apartment on a huge turntable and this is a masterstroke. As it rumbles around, presenting different views of both the interior and exterior of the apartment, it increasingly resembles a deranged carousel with the players caught in its unhealthy embrace, unable to get off the ride until it arrives at its ghastly destination. Director Elizabeth Newman eschews the victim-blaming that so often blights interpretations of this play and turns up the heat on the sweaty, malevolent scenario, so that the play’s final half makes intense, disturbing viewing. Those who are triggered by scenes of sexual violence should be warned that there are some challenging moments here, but for me, it’s like passing a car wreck on the motorway – I cannot tear my gaze away.

If you’re thinking, ‘Well, I’ve seen this play before,’ perhaps you should think again. This is a mesmerising slice of theatre, that feels as important now as it ever did.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

A Streetcar Named Desire

03/10/17

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

Rapture Theatre’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire is as intense and uncomfortable as it should be, with a towering central performance by Gina Isaac as Blanche DuBois, who absolutely captures the oxymoronic tigress/moth nature of Tennessee Williams’ most complex anti-heroine.

The story is well-known: Blanche visits her sister and brother-in-law, Stella and Stanley, in New Orleans, where she soon overstays her welcome, drinking their liquor and sneering at their two-room home. However, despite her airs and graces, it transpires that Blanche has nowhere else to go: the plantation her family owned is gone; there is no money left and she’s lost her teaching job. She’s a tragic creature, as desperate as she is beautiful, as damaged as she is damaging. She clings to the old order, where she had youth and status and respect; she can’t accept that it is gone.

The casting of a black actor (Joseph Black) as Stanley Kowalski adds the suggestion that Blanche’s snobbery is tinged with racism: her descriptions of him as an ‘animal’ or an ‘ape’ mirror the racist language deployed by white supremacists. She feels instinctively superior to him, and is condescending even as she relies on him for the very basics of her existence. Under Michael Emans’ direction, the claustrophobia of their lives is central, emphasised by the small set, which squats at the front of the large stage space. There may well be a world out there, but the characters in this play aren’t able to enjoy it. They’re all trapped, bound together in their misery; it’s a crackling tinderbox.

And when it catches, the fire destroys everything. Stanley rapes Blanche and it’s brutal: Isaac’s depiction of drunken vulnerability makes the moment stark and clear. There is no way this woman is capable of consent. Whatever humiliations she has heaped upon Stanley, in this moment, he is entirely at fault. It’s horrible to watch and it’s very powerful indeed.

I’m not sure about the music, which I think is supposed to be inside Blanche’s head, played at a volume where I can just about catch it. I’m guessing this is the point, but I find it distracting and not a little irritating at times. Still, this is a strong production, which does real justice to Williams’ play, and never shirks from the complexity of the characters portrayed.

4.5 stars

Susan Singfield