And so it was I entered the broken world

To trace the visionary company of love, its voice

An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)

But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

"The Broken Tower" by Hart Crane

It’s 1947 New Orleans. The air is hot and muggy, filled with sensual music, sweating workers, and lipstick stains. Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire is a masterpiece in familial drama, set against a changing, post-war America. Blanche visits her married sister, Stella, in New Orleans. The new South rises up against the old South as the two sisters clash over Stella’s husband, Stanley. It is a story of conflicting values, female agency, and glaring masculinity.

I remember, very distinctly, when I first read this play; I was intrigued as to how Williams had managed to sustain the intensity over eleven very distinct scenes, all placed in one claustrophobic apartment. My two visual experiences with this play are the 1951 classic with Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh (directed by the forward-thinking Elia Kazan), and the Young Vic 2014 performance (directed by the visionary Benedict Andrews), which was recently aired on National Theatre Live. A scene fragment from the production can be seen on YouTube.

The film and theatre production are two very different experiences of the same narrative. They felt almost like two entirely different scripts. In fact, they are. This led me to consider which medium is more successful in resurrecting the world Williams intended. Should we place our primary value on the writer’s intentions? Do films endure the test of time more robustly than theatrical adaptations? Which performance hits you in the gut more? I am in two minds.

My grandparents moved to Hollywood after WWII. I remember my grandma saying how this play shook every­one in their circles, with its shameless discussion of sexuality. In 1951, it was the film to see and there was a real illicitness that surrounded it. In their technicalities, the scripts do differ. As a film, the transitions are smooth, and the locations are multiple. Scenes happen in tandem, in real time. Inherently, this fleshes out Williams’ world, as we see the characters interact and react in places such as the train station and the bowling alley, near and apart from each other. The characters are full and embedded in their physical and psychological landscape, which is essential in our understanding of Blanche’s isolation. This is a particular directorial technique, based on ritual, which positions a character in a variety of settings in order to expand the scope of their personality. These scenes bring colour and reality to the story. However, it undoubtedly feels far away from Williams’ script. Those wanting to hear Blanche’s monologue and unforgettable lines such as ‘we’ve had this date from the beginning’ will be disappointed. There are fewer monologues and the text is defined by its fiery, interlinking dialogue. Censorship laws also muted Blanche’s rape, Stella’s sexuality, and allusions to Blanche’s husband’s homosexuality. However, saying this, there is a potency to all three characters, which goes far beyond the literal words in the script. It is subtle and creeps under the skin. The black and white of the film highlights shade, sweat, and light which is far more sensual in its textures than the exuberant colours of the 2014 set.

Blanche  DuBois is a complex, baffling, and frankly, faintly irritating character. On reading, I have always found her self-pitying and delusional; I just wanted to shake her. Leigh’s portrayal is in a similar vein; she is melodramatic, self-obsessed and her voice is so performative it grates. We lose sympathy for her as she preens and bathes, seeping further into her imaginary world. Personally, I felt disconnected from her, despite her role as a victim. In fact, this is through no fault of her own as she is victimised immediately by both the male gaze and her hyperbolic tendencies, rather than given any room to show her damaged status, through actions rather than words. Helped by her physical presence in the same room, Gillian Anderson’s 2014 Young Vic portrayal was far more nuanced and uncomfortable. With Magda Willi’s revolving stage, we saw her from every angle. When she is sectioned in the final scene, it is heart-breaking. I think that the most problematic issue with the film is its ending: the censorship board felt that Stanley needed to be seen to pay for his alleged rape (even though it was never actually seen), so ultimately, Stella states her intention to leave Stanley. This alteration morphs the gut-wrenching grappling of the play script, in which we see a woman torn between sister and husband, between blood and physical drive. It is a highly complex and wordless moment, that was undermined by the screenplay:

STELLA Don’t you touch me. Don’t you ever touch me again.

STANLEY Stella! Come on, Stella.

STELLA No, I’m not. I’m not going back in there again. Not this time. Never going back. Never.

It shows women as two-dimensional and moralistic, rather than complex, entangled human beings. With Anderson, we see her breakdown and the devastating effects it leaves with her sister:

STANLEY [a bit uncertainly]: Stella?

 [She sobs with inhuman abandon. There is something luxurious in her complete surrender to crying now that her sister is gone.]

STANLEY [voluptuously, soothingly]: Now, honey. Now, love. Now, now, love.

[He kneels beside her and his fingers find the opening of her blouse] Now, now, love. Now, love....

It is a fair assumption to say that film is better able to dismiss context entirely. In watching a screen, whether it be a television, laptop, or if you’re lucky, cinema, it is an all-encompassing experience. You enter a world, even if it is different from your own and you accept it as it is. Theatre has a shifty, uneasy relationship with the past and with reality. Usually, there are other people in the room. They cough, they rustle programmes, sometimes, they even whisper and verbally react. The act of watching theatre is an inherently human experience. Personally, that is what I think makes theatre so unique, but it does undermine a resurrection of reality. There are many bodies in the room, so the audience feels very closely connected to the actors. This was more than true for the Young Vic performance: we felt Blanche’s alienation as she backed further into the four walls of the apartment. We were drawn into her perspective; we felt both pity and frustration. This was also the case with Williams’ script, which is filled with racist jargon and references to cotton plantations. In 2014, this feels distinctly jarring, especially seeing as the production had been re-contextualised to now. For me, it just didn’t work. It was trying to be relevant, realistic, and root itself in Williams’ writing. The problem with theatre is that when you are alienated, it is hard to become re-invested. Film can be stopped, rewound, sped up, so you authenticate the experience for yourself. The 1951 film feels far more complete and more encapsulated than the 2014, constantly shifting, production.

I think that all these questions and dissections lead to a general discussion of context (not just within the play itself). Should we be aware of the 1947 context of Williams writing, the 1951 context of the film, and the 2014 context of the Young Vic production? Should this affect our perceptions? This is at the heart of the argument, as each adaptation is a reflection of its contemporary audience. The 2014 homes in on a more physically driven, sexually obsessed Stanley, whereas the 1951 performance highlights a class-embittered Stanley. The 1951 production uses close photography to enhance the realism, whereas the 2014 performance is filled with lyricism and the literal changing of set, with technicolour and modern music. It is far more metatheatrical in its construction. There are so many differences in form, as each was targeting a different audience who had different expectations from art; for 1951, this was the glamour of Hollywood and heightened drama, for 2014, this was the truthful telling of a fractured woman’s agency against an indifferent system. Like any story, there are multiple narratives within it. So, perhaps, we could just see these two productions as focusing on a different story within a greater whole. They are both A Streetcar Named Desire. We should respect them as two distinct art forms that pay homage to a brilliant, universal script. A brilliant merging of the two forms is seen in the short film prequel to the Young Vic production, in which we see Blanche before her journey to New Orleans. It is brilliant, beautiful and well worth watching. It is a fantastic merging of theatre and film that fleshes out Blanche’s story.

In the last few months, the theatre world has been forced into the film world, with recorded productions posted across the Internet. It has made many assess as to how we define and understand artistic mediums. To watch a multi-shot theatre production feels too much like a film, but to watch a fixed perspective feels too frigid. Watching theatre online can never elicit the same emotional response as film; it is far too staged. It feels destabilising, but it could also be seen as a moment to be innovative and look beyond the engrained conventions of each medium. As we move forward, it will be thrilling to see how theatre utilises film. In the case of A Streetcar Named Desire, I would be excited to see a contemporary film, which uses all the lyricism and three-dimensionality of the very human experience of theatre.

Download the theatre script for A Streetcar Named Desire here.

Alice Chambers is studying on the MFA Theatre Directing course at Birkbeck, University of London, with a placement starting at the Birmingham Rep theatre in autumn 2020.