A lot of things happen when "A Streetcar Named Desire" is edited, most of them interesting.
Yellow Tree Theatre's "Streetcar" is a four-character affair, eliminating neighbors and Stanley's poker buddies, which makes for a seriously underpopulated card game. It also shifts the dynamic in surprising ways, including that Stella now seems like the main character.
Blanche DuBois practical younger sister is the one with big decisions to make in "Streetcar," when her dreamy, damaged sibling moves into the cramped apartment that Stella shares with loutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Blanche brings into focus what a brute Stanley is and forces Stella to re-evaluate a relationship driven by the "colored lights" the Kowalskis see during sex.
On top of that, Stella is the play's fulcrum, the person who connects to the other main characters and helps them see one another more clearly. It all comes across in Kendall Kent's pure, unadorned work as Stella. Somehow, Stella had the resources to survive whatever childhood events doomed Blanche, and Kent convinces us she'll survive the tragic events of "Streetcar," too.
There also are surprises in Nathan Keepers' sly Stanley, who is funnier and, at the beginning, more reasonable than you'd expect from the character whose T-shirts got ripped to shreds when Marlon Brando played him. By play's end, Keepers' shirts remain intact but, in the oft-imitated scene when Stanley repeatedly yells "Stella!" the actor shows us Stanley's frightening desperation. He's a lot like Blanche, in fact, drowning his pain in booze and diversions. The difference? Stanley tells the brutal truth, while Blanche prefers genteel lies.
Maybe that's why there's not as much poetry as I'd like in this "Streetcar." In its conception, it appeals more to the head than the heart. But it gives us lots to think about and there's no question Tennessee Williams' 75-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner still speaks to us. When Blanche (Nora Targonski-O'Brien) says that her name means "White Woods," it may strike you that Blanche/White, who also says she loves to be waited on, puts the "bois" in "bois privilege." She's nominally the protagonist of "Streetcar," but her white-glove cruelty hits its targets just as surely as Stanley's — at least until she's tipped into madness by their final confrontation, which is unusually low-key in this production.
That reticent confrontation robs the finale of some of its power. I also can't decide what to think about the woman who performs set changes in a blank mask that makes her look like a maniac in a home invasion horror movie. You could certainly argue what we're watching is horror but I'm not sure Randy Reyes' production makes that case.
Near the end, Blanche famously says, "I don't want realism. I want magic," and I guess I'm Team Blanche. I liked it but I wish this "Streetcar" had just a bit more magic.
'A Streetcar Named Desire'
Who: By Tennessee Williams. Directed by Randy Reyes.
When: 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun.
Where: Yellow Tree Theatre, 320 5th Av. SE., Osseo.
Protocol: Masks required at Sunday performances.
Tickets: $31-$35, yellowtreetheatre.com.
