A Streetcar Named Desire - Almeida / Phoenix / Noel Coward

Seeing Streetcar tonight but I don't regret seeing it in the original setting. I've only ever watched the Young Vic recorded version (Gillian Anderson) and have always wanted to see the 'live' version. Very excited!

I still think she's miscast in this. Her acting is great but looks far too young to play a woman who's passed her prime and her beauty is fading.

I'll still see it again in the West End.

Jessica Tandy and Vivien Leigh were both in their 30s when they put Blanche on the landscape. Blanche is not supposed to be greatly older than Stella or Stanley. Alcoholism, depression and stress take their toll on anyone, and its not so long ago even here that unmarried women over 30 were considered old maids.

I simply don't understand the criticisms about Ferran's age damaging her performance

It's interesting to read this thread because I'm just not sure Blanche is a beauty. Good-looking, though nothing like the emphasis offered by the first production on Broadway and later Hollywood. In turn, the idea travelled more widely including, latterly, to the Young Vic. The whole Southern belle thing, perhaps.

I can't see it in the text.

Wikipedia goes with the flow - depictions (above) - but CliffNotes seems to pay more attention to the script:



I'm just mooting the idea what we are seeing in this production is Rebecca Frecknall pulling it back more to Williams' original intentions for the character of Blanche.

Not sure it's actually got that much to do with Rebecca Frecknall; she imagined the production with Lydia Wilson in mind, and Wilson is five years older than Ferran and more in keeping with the established image of Blanche DuBois. With Wilson no longer able to continue with the production it was about to be a case of kick-bollocks-scramble to find a new Blanche, but fortunately for everyone at the Almeida the immediate Hail Mary pass was quickly caught by the incredibly safe hands of Patsy Ferran.

Having now seen the production I think that Ferran is beyond brilliant, and it is her performance that elevates the production from being very good to being unmissable. She shattered my previous understanding of the play and of the part, and made me feel like I was watching something that was unfolding before my eyes in a way that I hadn't expected. What incredibly rare magic that is; forget about safe hands, she has the hands of a sorceress!

The other cast members do fine work, particularly Dwane Walcott who gives a beautifully focused and understated performance as Mitch, and the shape and feel of the production are largely well-realised, but the performance that Patsy Ferran gives feels like it is in union with the play and the playwright in a way that a director just cannot extract. It's either there or it isn't, and like with Summer and Smoke it just feels like Patsy Ferran is somehow directly communing with the spirit and sensibilities of Tennessee Williams.

Incidentally, whisperings from the rehearsal room intimated that Lydia Wilson was going to prove to be an extremely excellent Blanche until she her injury deprived her and us from being able to experience it. Hopefully her recovery will be swift and we will see her being excellent again very soon indeed.

Not entirely sure that directors at the top of their game like Rebecca Frecknall are likely to rely on Cliff Notes to make their points or delineate their approach to the text, but it's a fun image.

As for the casting change, I suspect that most people on here are fully aware of it but your post seemed to suggest that you had (even if only temporarily) completely forgotten it. Your post suggested that the casting of Ferran was some brilliant insight by design from Frecknall and I was pointing out that it was more of a happy accident by dint of the fact that Ferran only became part of the production at the 11th hour. But maybe you need the Cliff Notes for my earlier post...

I don't know what the safe modern equivalent is, but in the old Firefox days you could set it to regularly scan and ping whenever a specified web page was updated, which was very handy for returns popping up. 

I looked at the prices just now and feeling glad I've seen it for £25.

Seem to be several rows at the front of the stall not yet on sale. In fact the seats available via Almeida's link are quite limited. If you go to "green" days later in the run, it's the same ones available.

Both my queues at ATG and the Almeida have crashed, I feel like I am trying to buy tickets to a Taylor Swift show

Can anyone indicate what the absolute cheapest price point is for the transfer, and where in the theatre those seats are located?

Yes please!