Peter Salem : A Streetcar Named Desire
Scottish Ballet
Scottish Ballet Orchestra
Martin Yates
An interesting project, this new ballet based on Tennessee Williams's celebrated play. Reading some of the articles published before the premiere (which was the 11th), this is the first time I hear of a ballet being directed, like a play. Normally, a ballet is staged, with the choreographer very much in control of what is done, and how it is done. This appears to have been a rather more collaborative process between American film and theatre director Nancy Meckler, and the choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. Meckler has a reputation for choreographing her actors pretty extensively in any event; apparently that was what gave Scottish Ballet's director Ashley Page the idea to invite her to create a new work for the company.
On the whole, I'd say the result is pretty successful. It's not, of course, any sort of reproduction of the play. That would be impossible, to start with, and probably not very successful in any case. The setting has opened out, as has the story. A large part of the first act (there are two) actually gives us Blanche's history in some detail. We see her early marriage, her discovery of her husband's sexual ambivalence and her consequent rejection of him, his suicide, the gradual dissolution of her family, starting with Stella's departure, and the collapse of the old Southern estate, her plunge into alcoholism and promiscuity, and her eventual arrival at her sister's apartment in New Orleans. We also see Stella's first meeting with Stanley.
What has changed fairly radically from the play is the sense of hothouse claustrophobia which is such an integral part of Williams's world. Indeed, once the Dubois house collapses (literally, but I'll come back to that), there is little sense of the Deep South, and none at all of New Orleans. Stella simply goes to the 'big city', and Peter Salem's score, while using elements of jazz, does not evoke New Orleans-style jazz particularly either. This is not necessarily a problem; generally, it's no big deal, but the one area it does impact is in Stanley's portrayal. I don't feel that Ochoa and Meckler quite got that right. The exuberance was made clear, but other than an early scene in a bowling alley, the volatility and the inevitability of his immediate recourse to violence, because he's unable to express himself any other way, were not. The gestures were there, but not the power of them, and nowhere was this more evident than in the penultimate rape scene. It takes place at a fairly slow pace, very deliberate. It's possible Ochoa meant this because the previous scene is a dipsomaniac fantasy inspired by Monroe's "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" routine, and therefore quite lively, so she wanted the contrast. However, the effect is to make it look premeditated, instead of the explosion of pent-up frustration that it should be.
There were other longueurs, for example an unnecessary depiction of Blanche's train journey to the city, or a dance-hall scene which, while fun, added nothing to the story. We had already got the point that Blanche is haunted by her husband's ghost. However, there were many other strong points; the trio between Blanche, Alan (her husband) and his lover, the bowling alley, set to a lively 50s style jive number, the very intense pas de deux between Stella and Stanley, when they reunite after he's struck her, or the final scene, another fantasy where Blanche chases after Alan in a 'field' of red flowers, only to have him die in her arms, again and again, until she's pinned under a single light like the moth with which she has been identified right from the start. The first act is better than the second, I felt, but it works well enough as a cohesive whole.
The other genuinely impressive factor was the staging. We first see Blanche before a large image of a Southern mansion. When Blanche's early life falls apart, this image collapses into a chaos of blocks, about the size of a drinks crate. Part of this tumble will be subtly formed into a city skyline, which will remain for the rest of the evening, while the rest will be manipulated deftly into seats, beds, platforms, and loose evocations of other props. It was ingenious, and very well planned, and full marks to the design team for dreaming it up.
Peter Salem's original score is a sound design, as much as actual music. There's a small band in the pit, and a very large battery of electronic consoles at the back of the auditorium to blend the musicians in with specific sound effects and ambient noises of cars, trains, radios, cicadas, etc., and it works very well. There are old-fashioned waltzes, 50s-style popular music, jazz and more classically derived orchestral sounds (with a very strong influence of latter-day Philip Glass). It's effective, and often entertaining.
Of the dancers themselves, the cast was quite naturally, and rightly, dominated by Eve Mutso, as Blanche. As with the play, if the Blanche isn't strong enough, you're left with a gaping hole in the middle of proceedings, but that certainly wasn't a problem here. Mutso captured the fragility and the instability of the character very well, her broken coquetry, and the desperate emptiness of her interactions with others. Sophie Martin was also good as the simpler Stella, as determined to reject her past as Blanche is to cling on to it, colder and clearer in her focus on her husband and her family. Tama Barry had the right sort of muscular presence, and gave a strong, confident performance. He could, probably, have produced the more explosive qualities of the character had this version allowed him to.
Will this version stand the test of time? Hard to say at this stage; the audience certainly seemed to enjoy it and, yes, I would probably go and see it again, to see if a different cast could shed a different light on the characters. I think that it was certainly worth the attempt, on the company's part, and that they have a good show on their hands.
[Next: 17th April]
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