Streetcar is one of a trilogy of stripped-back Williams plays Frecknall has developed. First, there was her Almeida production of Summer and Smoke, for which Ferran won an Olivier. Most recently Frecknall took on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, led by Mescal’s former costar Daisy Edgar-Jones. (Mescal was “jealous” when he saw it.)
With Streetcar, Frecknall wanted to overturn tropes that have dominated productions of the New Orleans–set show since the movie, starring Marlon Brando, came out in 1951. Yes, her take follows the unraveling of DuBois, an aging Southern belle, as she moves in with her younger sister, Stella, and her rough-edged brother-in-law, Stanley. Yes, Stanley’s needs for truth and respect bristle against the fragile delusion and snobbery Blanche protects herself with. But this production feels more intimate, more empathetic—fairer to its antiheroine.
“This is not about watching the demise of someone with mental illness,” Frecknall tells me. “This is about watching someone who has survived great trauma since childhood.” The cast are in their 20s and 30s, as Williams wrote them. “Blanche is often done with actors further into their career. And I loved the idea of reclaiming her youth,” says Frecknall. An onstage drummer provides an increasingly frenetic soundscape, while the ensemble surrounds an industrial set, passing props in when needed; it’s all a claustrophobic island upon which Blanche, Stanley, and Stella are stranded.
“You can’t hide,” Mescal says. “You’re totally exposed in a way that’s both frightening and exciting. And the audience feels that.”
Perhaps it’s from this pressure that Mescal’s terrifying Stanley grew. “It’s cathartic,” he says of the role which sees him yell, howl, and prowl the stage. “I think we’ve all got rage in us. And I think sometimes mine can be pretty close to the surface.” Frecknall recalls a workshop where Mescal got down on all fours like a dog, snarling at Blanche. “I remember going, ‘That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,’ ” she says. “ ‘We have to do that.’ ”
Still, it’s Mescal’s vulnerability that led her to cast him. (“I don’t feel like I’m playing a villain,” he says. “He’s as hurt as Connell.”) “People think of Streetcar as a play about Blanche and Stanley,” Frecknall explains. “But when Williams first pitched it to his agent, he said, ‘I’m writing a play about two sisters.’ ” As one of three herself, Frecknall, 38, is obsessed with sororal ties—and Ferran and Vasan are the dream actors, she thinks, to draw viewers into their relationship before it explodes, tragically. “They have a history together as actors and as friends, and you feel that.”
