A Streetcar Named Desire

Reviewed by Terry Morgan
The Group Rep
Through Sept. 7

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Photo by Drina Durazo

The current production of Tennessee Williams’s classic A Streetcar Named Desire by The Group Rep at the Lonny Chapman Theatre is a pleasant surprise, a robust take on the material that features a strong ensemble, an outstanding Blanche, and smart direction that brings the material to vibrant life.

In 1947 New Orleans, Blanche Du Bois (Diedra Celeste Miranda) has arrived unexpectedly to stay with her younger sister Stella (Anya Profumo) and Stella’s husband Stanley (Daniel Kaemon). Stella is surprised yet willing to put her up, but the brutish Stanley can’t stand Blanche’s high-toned posturing. Rescue for the desperate Blanche seems to arrive in the form of lonely Mitch (Kent Butler), but Stanley has other plans.

Miranda’s Blanche is a remarkably well-realized performance that ignores decades of over-the-top takes on this character, and instead focuses on making her seem real. Miranda doesn’t play Blanche as a force of nature conjured simply to do battle with Stanley, but rather as a woman whose years of self-delusion have just about broken her before she even arrives at the Kowalski household. Miranda does excellent work with Blanche’s famous monologues, but it’s the subtleties of her performance, the quiet intersections of memory and mania, that stick with you.

Kaemon offers an appropriately frightening Stanley, but is slightly less successful showing the side of Stanley that would keep Stella returning to him. Profumo does a nice job as the conflicted Stella; her remorse and horror at the play’s conclusion is particularly believable and affecting. Butler excels at Mitch, especially in a scene where his fumbling chivalry sours into ugly behavior. The entire ensemble does fine work, effectively creating the French Quarter milieu in countless small moments.

Director L. Flint Esquerra not only gets thoughtful and potent work from his cast but also stages the show cleverly, connecting each scene with moments of neighborhood life that fully use set designer Chris Winfield’s evocative apartment and New Orleans surroundings. Esquerra creates a sense that the drama is happening within a living community, achieving moments of understated beauty such as a woman walking alone through the night street softly singing “Body and Soul” to herself, as if the lead character from another tragedy was just wandering through, unnoticed.

This is an ambitious and successful production that deserves to be a hit for this company.

Lonny Chapman Theatre, 10900 Burbank Blvd., N. Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m.; through September 7. thegrouprep.com