Theatre
A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams · 1947
Synopsis
Blanche DuBois, a former teacher from Laurel, Mississippi, takes the Desire streetcar, changes to Cemeteries and gets off on Elysian Fields, in New Orleans. Her younger sister, Stella, lives in two ground-floor rooms with Stanley Kowalski, a working-class man of Polish origin. Blanche announces that the family property is lost. She takes baths, drinks, veils the bulb with a paper lantern and tells her story to whoever will listen; Mitch, a friend of Stanley's, courts her. Stanley makes inquiries about what she did before.
Context
Produced by Irene Mayer Selznick, the play opened on 3 December 1947 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, with Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, and reached 855 performances. Raymond Rouleau staged it in Paris in 1949, at the Théâtre Édouard VII, in an adaptation by Jean Cocteau, with Arletty. For the 1951 film, censorship imposed cuts and a different ending. The title comes from a New Orleans streetcar line, near which Williams lived.
Who it is for
A play in eleven scenes, often staged in France in adaptations, from Jean Cocteau in 1949 to Pierre Laville.
Prizes and reception
Pulitzer Prize 1948; Jessica Tandy received a Tony Award, and the play the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.
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