Unlocking Desire
Tennessee Williams did right by his treatment of Blanche DuBois, the tragic heroine of A Streetcar Named Desire; the classic play uses nuance and inference to delicately trace (here be spoilers!) a used and broken woman’s final spiral into insanity. Now, playwright Barbara Neri seeks to revisit the character and possibly offer release in Unlocking Desire, taking those dearly extracted private truths and tossing them into the primordial soup of troubles of a mental institution. Yet at the same time, Neri seems so gun-shy to take the character in an unsanctioned direction that poor Blanche can go nowhere at all; in actuality, this Khoros Inc. production (performed at the Marlene Boll Theatre within the downtown Detroit YMCA, with direction by John Jakary) prefers exclusively to exorcise old demons in new surroundings.
The play’s premise imagines the next steps for Blanche (Linda Rabin Hammell), who was at last writing being escorted away to the booby hatch. (Although a basic familiarity with Williams’s original text — not the 1951 film, there are key differences — couldn’t hurt, the script’s overwhelming repetition of the critical plot points should get even the most unversed viewer on track.) Upon her arrival, the newest patient is introduced to a half-dozen institutionalized personalities that can all conveniently be used to reflect on the protagonist in some way. It’s very Blanche Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, especially in us-versus-them group scenes of mild to moderate rebellion. In the interest of academic discourse, each character is reduced to a cheat sheet of useful opposing convictions, rendering conversations about love and desire into so many core values being nakedly wielded at each other, with little import assigned to who originated them. However blatant, the main tenets and arguments are certainly intelligent and thought-provoking, and most every beat swells with deeper meaning.
The second act turns more to two-person scenes in which key players serve to let Blanche absolve herself of her nagging missteps. Although the supporting performances are intense, from Yolanda Perez’s spookily prescient seer to Kristen Wagner’s hair-trigger basket case, the play never grants an audience to any of the ancillary characters except as a lens through which to view Blanche, which would be easier to swallow if this character in any way resembled her fascinating and layered former self. As reluctant as original-flavor Blanche was to divulge the sordid details of her past, this iteration can hardly do anything else, stuck on the old memories that drove her to madness at the expense of new information. Stripped of all her former gentility and privacy, Hammell’s unrecognizable Blanche is hardened and petulant, shockingly eager to insist that she was raped, whereas the word rape itself would almost certainly be verboten for her predecessor. Her former disgrace at discovering, then shaming, her husband’s homosexuality — which drove him to suicide — is well met by Eric Niece’s Raoul, himself a hetero-married homosexual and a tender proxy for one of many unsubtle scenes of forgiveness and healing. The only character that challenges Blanche’s singular worldview is war veteran and erstwhile poet Hank, and Sean Rodriguez’s electric portrayal all-too-briefly elevates the closing scene into something with intrigue and promise.
Adding to the mixed-message homage is a multimedia thread (by video, image, and sound designer Alivia Zivich) that permeates the production elements: short video meanderings and photo slideshows that exult the character’s origins and the show’s ties to the old South and to the city of New Orleans. Below the projection screen is a representative display of folding, changeable walls through which Elisa Limberg adds dimension to a big space while still cleverly robbing the inmates of privacy. Lighting design by Dave Early revels in details, from a flickering television to a distinctive tight beam in which Hammell delivers a skillful monologue in rare solitude. Jomarie Ashley Soszinski’s costumes and Barbara and Ralph Neri’s properties get into the specifics, from Blanche’s wardrobe to the telltale evidence of the past she can’t escape, although the character seems to need little help reliving the worst parts.
In all, Unlocking Desire hangs on to the juiciest story elements of its source material, downplays its heroine’s defining characteristics, and cruelly withholds her future by forcing her to fixate on a past that was handled with more finesse and intrigue the first time. Although all the character and situation inconsistencies are explained away with one broad swipe of a blanket about-face, it’s appropriate to question whether this single-minded view justifies invocation of this classic text in the first place. This heady, self-serious, analytical play is engineered to pose questions to the viewer, which it will, although some may be about the execution rather than the journey.
October 6, 2011