More Heat Than Desire

TITLE: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

AUTHOR: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

WHERE: BROADWAY

THE BOTTOM LINE: Star power isn’t enough to get this vehicle rolling.

WHEN A CRITIC AND FELLOW tippler suggested to Tennessee Williams that he | might be a better playwright if he stayed off the sauce, Williams patted his companion’s forearm and with a satisfied smile challenged, “Improve A Streetcar Named Desire.” The discussion stopped right there. The years since its debut in 1947 have only intensified the relevance of Streetcar’s vision of sexual passion as a force so powerful that the principal characters must all lie to themselves about it. But if Streetcar emphatically belongs back on Broadway, it deserves far better than this starry but mostly wan and torpid production.

No revival of recent years has been more eagerly anticipated than the pairing of movie stars Jessica Lange as the desperate, delusional Blanche DuBois and Alec Baldwin as her brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, the feral hunk who rapes her in body and mind. From the moment they meet, there should be a sense of yearning and of doom, as when Jessica Tandy and Marlon Brando legendarily created the roles. Alas, there are no sparks between the current team.

Baldwin, a fine actor in emotionally reserved roles, cannot summon enough of Stanley’s musky sexual appeal or his apish brutality. His voice is too light, his features are too aristocratic. Above all, he cannot uncork the character’s volcanic ego. The violent fits and howls are all there, yet feel calculated. Lange gives Blanche an initial strength that makes her breakdown all the more overpowering, and provides the few moments of real magic, describing the breakup of her family home and her hopeless marriage to a closeted homosexual. These scenes, however, are with Amy Madigan, able if stolid as her sister Stella, and Timothy Carhart, woefully miscast but game as the amiable lug Blanche beguiles. The real fault lies with director Gregory Mosher, who achieves the languorous pace of a New Orleans summer — but not the steam. W.A.H. III