As written in 2014:
I saw this NT:LIVE, not Young Vic live, last Tuesday and was hoping to get a proper review up but, time is of essence. Encore performances – globally – are happening tomorrow evening, and on October 6th. And it is well, well, worth booking a ticket.
Information on venues and tickets can be found here.
This is a magnetic performance of a lifetime, nay of a career.
Gillian Anderson is mesmerising and magnificent. Her portrayal of Blanche Dubois is heart-breaking and fantastic. And she owns the stage, no matter who she is sharing it with. This is a magnetic performance of a lifetime, nay of a career. If you like theatre, value good acting, or ever loved Scully (and to think I was once all about Foxy Mulder) this is something that is not to be missed.
It isn’t a flawless production, but it is brilliant nonetheless. I’m in the camp of people who think that updating the look of the piece and moving it into present day New Orleans (even if the Tennessse Williams’ text itself isn’t itself updated) is only partially successful. But the performances and the staging are stupendous. In the NT:LIVE broadcast the fact that the stage itself revolved in the auditorium of the Young Vic, turning clockwise and then anti-clockwise, doesn’t fully come across, yet that doesn’t diminish from the experience of watching the play.
Ben Foster is good as Stanley Kowalski, though not to my mind sexy. Vanessa Kirby who plays Blanche’s sister Stella is phenomenal as Stanley’s abused wife.
But the stage belongs to Gillian Anderson.
ETA:
From the 21st of May 2020 this is streaming live on YouTube, for seven days, as part of the National Theatre’s phenomenal National Theatre at Home Series.