In rehearsals of “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1974, Claire Bloom asked Tennessee Williams what happened to Blanche duBois after she left the sanatorium where Stanley Kowalski sent her at play’s end. Williams replied that he thought Blanche would open a nice little shop somewhere.
What’s much more likely is that Blanche walked into a seedy bar not unlike the one Eugene O’Neill puts on stage in his 1921 play “Anna Christie.” And it’s very likely she walks into that dive just the way Michelle Williams enters the stage in the edgy and very chilling new revival that opened Sunday at St. Ann’s Warehouse.
Anna Christie has had it with men — and for good reason. Abandoned by her immigrant father (Brian d’Arcy James) at age five, she ended up on a Minnesota farm where relatives molested her. She takes refuge in prostitution, and even before she orders her first glass of whiskey at that aforementioned bar, Williams makes it clear that this Anna is bone tired from all the male abuse. For the next two and a half hours, Williams never lets go of that exhaustion and disgust, even when she supposedly falls in love with a shipwrecked stud named Mat (Tom Sturridge).
“Hamilton” director Thomas Kail brings this exceedingly bitter interpretation to the stage. “Anna Christie” is rarely revived, and the last Broadway staging came in 1993 with Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson. That married couple packed a lot of sexual heat on stage because she ultimately surrendered completely to his animal magnetism, which was considerable since Neeson was half naked and all greased up for a Bruce Weber photo shoot in the first act. Director David Leveaux exploited this sexual fantasy to the hilt, and made Anna’s submission even more palatable by having Neeson clean up very nicely for act two when Mat asks Anna’s father for her hand in marriage. He even put on a suit.
Sturridge never cleans up. He never puts on a suit. In fact, after slapping up on stage like a beached shark, he lets his teeth grow sharper, his drunken behavior becomes more soused with each scene. The set design by Christine Jones and Brett J. Banakis cleverly uses piles of green beer bottles to replicate the swirling waves of a stormy sea under Natasha Katz’s atmospheric lighting.
You wanted to see Richardson and Neeson get it on. You don’t want to see Williams and Sturridge do the same, and the brilliance of Williams’ interpretation is how she never puts aside her hatred of men. She basically plays her vile suitor Mat against her father, who lectures Anna on the cruel fate of women who fall in love and marry sailors. Williams’ Anna takes this lesson to heart, but gives it a different, positive spin. It’s her dream to be left alone, just as all those women were left alone when their sailor-husbands went off to sea. At play’s end, she can rest finally.
D’Arcy James has gone from leading man to character actor with a vengeance only replicated by Albert Finney onscreen. It’s a truly transformational performance, and one this gifted actor achieves without doubling his weight à la Finney.
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