S.D. ‘Streetcar’ Takes Dynamic New Route

Pamala Tyson, tall, strong and elegant, startles at first as Blanche duBois in the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s production of “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

Tyson is African American, playing a part that traditionally has been associated with the decline of Southern white aristocracy. But it’s not her color, it’s her interpretation of Blanche that reaches fresh emotional planes in this great play.

Most actresses project a fragility and delicacy as Blanche that make it just a matter of time--and exposition--before the brutish Stanley Kowalski will extinguish her flickering flame. And that works.

But Tyson projects a strength and conviction that makes you wonder about the inevitability of the outcome. Or even if you know who is going to prevail, you aren’t certain when--there is some tension and doubt before Stanley delivers the knockout punch.

The show, like its star, is feisty and determined, crackling with impassioned personalities in collision. Blanche, a schoolteacher, comes to visit her married sister, Stella (Sabrina LeBeauf) in the old French Quarter of New Orleans.

Her sister’s husband, Stanley (Matte Osian), an earthy Polish American salesman, quickly determines that Blanche could ruin his marriage by reminding Stella that she deserves better. So he sets out to destroy her pretensions which, ultimately, she cannot live without.

Traditionally, Stella is portrayed as the timid mouse scurrying between her allegiances to her sister (and her old way of life) and her husband, who represents the new and virile, heartless order of things.

LeBeauf’s charged performance finds a sense of humor and irony in Stella’s lines and makes it clear that Stella, like her sister, is a strong-willed woman making choices.

Osian’s performance, too, exudes power--but that’s what you expect from Stanley. The element that could have made his work more interesting would have been a streak of vulnerability that would link him to these women, and deepen our understanding of why he desperately needs to decimate his sister-in-law.

Still, director Sam Woodhouse projects the overall tension of a high-stakes battle with epic combatants. And with each character so strong, one could feel Tennessee Williams’ inner battles raging as the 1947 world of “Streetcar” merges, emotionally, with moments from “The Glass Menagerie,” the playwright’s earlier, more frankly autobiographical play. Tyson’s Blanche has a little of Amanda Wingfield’s insufferable bossiness in her, mixed with the fragility of Laura of “The Glass Menagerie.”

Woodhouse also succeeds in creating the steamy sounds and feel of Tennessee Williams’ beloved New Orleans. The music, composed by Michael Roth, mixes thickly with the laughter and chatter, exuding an utter lack of privacy in close quarters.

Mary Larson’s costumes, at once simple and sensual, and the long narrow apartment design by Nya Patrinos and Michelle Riel--with the old, worn walls, the ornate iron-wrought balconies, the plants below--all add to the heady flavor of lush life curling around the mulch of death and decay.

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The supporting players, too, are strong. Bill Dunnam conveys the loneliness and confusion of Mitch, the suitor who understands Blanche almost well enough to save her, but not quite--and who will suffer, one imagines, in ensuing years for his failure. Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson and Wendel Lucas bring heft to the parts of Eunice and Steve upstairs, whose arguments punctuate and counterpoint the Kowalski skirmishes.

Another triumph for the show is that it is not really about cross-cultural casting, even though long, involved program notes purport to build a case for Blanche being a part of an “extensive history of free black culture,” including those who owned plantations.

You can count on that going over most viewer’s heads. Audiences don’t judge a show by whether it might work historically, but whether it does work dramatically.

This show works because of its scintillating performances. And so Williams makes the leap that Shakespeare did long ago, of accommodating cross-cultural casting because his play has gone beyond its historical underpinnings to settle in the universal and racially irrelevant world of emotional and spiritual complexity.

* “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Lyceum Stage, 79 Horton Plaza, San Diego. Tuesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m.; Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays and Feb. 14, 2 p.m. Ends Feb. 18. $19-$27. (619) 235-8025. Running time: 3 hours, 3 minutes.

Fred Biven: Pablo Gonzales/Musician

Bill Dunnam: Harold “Mitch” Mitchell

Ruben Flores: A Young Collector/Musician

Sabrina LeBeauf: Stella Kowalski

Wendel Lucas: Steve Hubbell

Catalina Maynard: Woman on the Porch/Mexican Woman/Nurse

Stan Mott: Doctor/Musician

Matte Osian: Stanley Kowalski

Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson: Eunice Hubbell

Pamala Tyson: Blanche DuBois

A San Diego Repertory Theatre production of a play by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Sam Woodhouse. Sets: Nya Patrinos. Set concept: Michelle Riel. Costumes: Mary Larson. Lights: John Philip Larson. Music/Sound: Michael Roth. Dramaturge: Stephanie Daventry French.