Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire undergoes a radical reinvention at The Theatre @ Boston Court where director Michael Michetti has transposed the seven-decade-old classic to 21st-century New Orleans to stunning effect.

 Once again troubled heroine Blanche DuBois (Jaimi Paige) arrives at the New Orleans apartment shared by her younger sister Stella (Maya Lynne Robinson) and Stella’s husband Stanley (Desean Kevin Terry), but this time round she finds her late-1940s persona time-machined into the year 2018 and a cast of characters who reflect not the world she has known but today’s Big Easy in all its racial and cultural diversity.

A radical reinvention indeed, but one that accomplishes at least three goals.

 First, and foremost, it allows actors of color to tackle roles traditional casting would deny them.

Second, it lets us reimagine Stella and Stanley as an African-American couple and the play’s supporting characters as Hispanic or mixed race in casting choices not colorblind but intentional.

Third, by setting Streetcar in today’s world and underscoring the action with a hip-hop soundtrack delivered live by onstage DJ Sam Sewell, Michetti and company take off the cobwebs as never before.

 Purists can rest assured that William’s text remains intact despite a logic bump or two along the way. (Not long after pulling out her cell phone to show her sister Stanley’s pic, Stella instructs Blanche to “dial O” when sending a telegram, then brags about the ten dollars Stanley’s given her to “smooth things over,” a measly sum compared to the $100 it would add up to today.)

Not that this matters all that much in a production that has us reexamining in a 21st-century light Blanche’s role as self-supporting and unmarried, her sexual appetite where younger men are concerned, Stanley’s violence towards Stella and his wife’s reaction to it, a deceased character’s closeted homosexuality, an 11th-hour rape, and issues of class and color along the way.

 Luminous and devastating, Paige is simply stunning in her depiction of Blanche’s neuroses, her delusions, and her desperate desire to cling to what she perceives as her fading youth and beauty and other vestiges of the past.

 A sensational Terry gives Stanley not just the requisite animal magnetism and threat of violence lurking just below the surface but an intelligence and capacity for tenderness a lesser actor might neglect.

Fierce and fabulous, Robinson’s Stella is warm, vivacious, and blessed with a capacity for forgiveness even when it may not be deserved, and her sexual, romantic chemistry with Terry’s Stanley sizzles like nobody’s business.

 Luis Kelly-Duarte’s standup-kind-of-guy Mitch is the loyal, easily deluded mensch that may be just what Blanche needs even if he’s the last man to light her fire.

 A terrific Chris Ramirez goes from grown-up poker player to a “young, young, young man” doing his best to avoid seduction, Mariana Marroquin and Joma Saenz make strong impressions as upstairs neighbors Eunice and Steve as does Martica de Cardenas in a couple of brief cameos, and an androgynous Paul Outlaw sings a mean Billie Holiday and plays it straight as a doctor who might just offer Blanche “the kindness of strangers.”

 Scenic designer Efren Delgadillo Jr. has given Stanley and Stella an apartment made of see-through metal scaffolding (even the curtains are clear plastic) without a hint of privacy, particularly with the audience seated on three sides, a set enhanced by Erin Walley’s detailed properties design and Rose Malone’s dramatic lighting.

Dominique Fawn Hill’s costumes range from faded 1947 chic to contemporary casual and Klint Flowers gives Blanche some just-right blonde curls.

Most striking of all is Sewell’s edgy, pulse-pounding sound design controlled from an onstage DJ stand and spiked with plenty of urban musical swagger.

June Carryl is assistant director. Ronnie Clark is fight choreographer. Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni is dramaturg. Casting is by Victoria Hoffman.

Alyssa Escalante is production stage manager and Katherine Hoevers is assistant stage manager.

The Tennessee Williams estate is famously picky about awarding rights to the first of his two Pulitzer Prize winners, which is why there’ve been so few Streetcars seen round L.A.

That The Theatre @ Boston Court was awarded these rights is reason enough to cheer. That Michael Michetti has delivered so thrillingly revolutionary a Streetcar Named Desire merits standing ovations and awards.

The Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena.
www.bostoncourt.org

–Steven Stanley
March 2, 2018
Photos: Jeff Lorch

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Tennessee Williams, The Theatre @ Boston Court