STAGE REVIEW : Sensitive ‘Streetcar’ Opens at UC Irvine

There aren’t many more poignant and telling exit lines in the modern theater than Blanche DuBois’ in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

After the brutal Stanley finally tears her down, she’s taken away by asylum attendants. Her last words are to them: “Whoever you are--I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

The irony penetrates. It’s Tennessee Williams summing up, his coda for this luminous masterpiece. Depending on the kindness of strangers can get you into big trouble, especially if you’re weak, especially when the stranger is someone like Stanley Kowalski. Williams tells us what should be obvious but often isn’t: that the beauty of gentle people must be cultivated and protected, not abused and exploited.

The line resonates at UC Irvine, just like it’s supposed to, as Sarah Salisbury’s Blanche straightens up, trying to keep her dignity in the face of this final “deliberate cruelty.” Her vulnerable, layered performance, and William Woodman’s intelligent direction, make this an emotionally satisfying “Streetcar.”

Woodman sets up the conflict between Blanche and Stanley with clarity. When she arrives penniless, run out of a small Southern town for seducing a 17-year-old student, she expects a safe harbor in the home of her sister Stella and her new husband. Her first shock comes from the surroundings.

Douglas-Scott Goheen’s set (complemented by Tom Ruzika’s evocative lighting) is a dark, poor place, almost subterranean. It’s not the clean, well-lighted world she was used to at Belle Reve, the family plantation that’s been lost. The next shock is Stanley, a lout with a special cunning for finding the tender spots in people and going straight for them. He works on her like steady erosion from a storm, then steps up the intensity. It’s really no contest.

Stanley can’t stomach her pretense, her airs. A kinder person, like Stella--or even Mitch, Stanley’s friend who woos Blanche--accepts them for what they are, her protection from admitting how far she’s fallen. But Stanley wants her revealed as no better than he.

Salisbury’s Blanche is sturdier than most. Even at play’s end, there’s that proud quality that leaves a trace of hope for her. But, as Williams intended, she’s a complicated woman, full of battling inner voices, and Salisbury gives us an idea of what those voices are telling her, whether to be girlishly flirty with Mitch (Salisbury seems to drop 20 years in a few scenes) or, with Stanley, desperately on guard.

As Stanley, Ken Perkins is coarse enough. Plenty mean, too. But he lacks the erotic force so necessary for the role. Still, the tension between the two is generated, in good part, by Perkins’ energy.

Stacy Ross is super as Stella. In a wholly natural performance, she communicates her own disarray in loving a man who is intent on destroying someone else she loves. As awkward, gentle Mitch, Rex Slate seems both too young and too compact for the big man drawn by Williams, but Slate does bring the right sensitivity to the role.

Not all in Woodman’s approach works. His notion of portraying the street life of New Orleans’ French Quarter--with an expanded stage area that surrounds the main set--leads to distraction. Too much is happening as local folk sell their wares, get in fights and busybody about. It may fill in time between scene shifts, but it also takes away an opportunity to pause and reflect and, further, it separates us from the relevant action at hand.

At times, there are so many people on stage, it seems merely an excuse to put as many UCI student actors to work as possible.

Woodman also tampers with the rape scene. Overlaying a tribal drum beat as Stanley attacks Blanche, who collapses in a crucifixion pose, is heavy symbolism indeed. We already know he’s a primitive, a “survivor of the Stone Age,” as Blanche says, so this all seems gratuitous.

But these are quibbles, certainly not enough to dilute the production’s overall strength and integrity.

‘A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE’

A UC Irvine production of the play by Tennessee Williams. Directed by William Woodman. With Sarah Salisbury, Ken Perkins, Stacy Ross, Rex Slate, Rasheryl McCreary, Michelle Elizabeth McHugh, Joe Batte, Doyle Ott, Scott Hayes, Samuel Harper, Bill Downey and Karen Alana. Set by Douglas-Scott Goheen. Costumes by Elizabeth Novak. Lighting by Tom Ruzika. Plays today at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Tuesday through May 13 at 8 p.m. with a 2 p.m. matinee on May 13. At the Fine Arts Village Theatre on the UCI campus. Tickets: $6 to $9. (714) 856-5000.