
Imago Theatre’s spectacular new production of A Streetcar Named Desire transcends Tennessee Williams’ masterful but intensely tragic content. With tour de force performances from its leads and the accompaniment of visceral music and sound effects, the show, directed by Jerry Mouawad, is a theatrical experience that’s as magical as it is nightmarish.
The set, which Mouawad designed with the help of Ty Caskin, Notion Williams and Carole Triffle, places its characters in 1947 amongst elegantly decaying dwellings on the street Elysian Fields in the French Quarter of New Orleans, which blooms with a lush beauty and the boisterous revels of masqueraders wearing macabre masks and shimmering purple robes. Yes, the sink in Stanley and Stella Kowalski’s (Max Bernsohn and Jaiden Wirth’s) apartment may be full of dishes and the walls of the buildings are streaked with age or perhaps water damage, but an opulent bouquet of velvety red flowers also sits on the center of their table.
The couple’s passion for each other throbs in all the touches of red throughout the set, but especially on their perpetually tousled red bedspread. No matter how many times Stella smooths it out, it seems to always be rumpled, partly because the apartment is so small that the rough-talking, liquor-drinking Stanley nonchalantly steps on it rather than walking around it to cross the room.

Into this oddly charming semi-squalor enters Stella’s sister, Blanche (brilliantly portrayed by Meghan Daaboul), looking pristine, if tired, in white gloves and pearls. Claiming to be taking a break from her teaching job, Blanche is also clearly in the habit of circumventing facts. Although she insists two drinks are her limit, she sniffs out Stanley’s stash of liquor before she even unpacks.
When she starred as Blanche in the original Broadway production of Streetcar, Jessica Tandy complained that the audience was more sympathetic to Marlon Brando’s Stanley. This was not the case at Imago at the show’s Friday, Jan. 17 performance, which was technically a preview. I was transfixed as I watched the delicate-boned Daaboul pivot with seeming ease from delivering sharp-tongued criticisms of Stanley’s sweaty appearance to chuckling over her own “fibs” and then finally exhibiting the fragility of a crumbling vintage doll, especially when she wears a pink full-skirted chiffon frock that looks like a child’s party dress. At the same time, her escape into a fantasy life where she’s loved and admired feels like a clever, if misguided, survival device.
From Stanley’s point of view, Blanche is the guest from hell, staying from May to September and chastising Stella for marrying beneath herself. In turn, he baits Blanche in the midst of her most anguished spells, during which she’s haunted by the music of a past trauma, and it’s excruciating to watch Stanley smilingly twist his metaphorical knife, forcing her to face how far she’s come down in society after having grown up with Stella on a plantation called Belle Reve, which means “beautiful dream.”
In the play’s world, other names are significant. Elysian Fields isn’t the pastoral place its name implies, but a gritty street where men get drunk and sometimes slap their wives. Still, Mouawad and his artistic team have created a sort of paradise. Flowers are everywhere in this spoiled garden: Red rose petals are scattered on the floor, pots overflowing with vibrant bouquets are mounted on the wall, and on the trellis of the balcony – or “gallery,” as it’s called in New Orleans – green vines climb and lavender wisteria blooms in abundance.
At times, soft light, also designed by Mouawad, shines on the leaves of the vines, so that they magically glow like Blanche’s happier visions. In another scene, though, the gleam of Stanley’s burgundy satin pajamas creates a foreboding effect.
Sound, too, shapes the emotions of the play. Thanks to Myrrh Larsen’s design, we hear both the plaintive music in Blanche’s head and the lively jazz coming from the neighborhood bars, as well as startling storms and train horns. I thought I also heard the barely perceptible drip of a faucet from the bath where Blanche retreats for hours to “calm her nerves,” but the production is so evocative, perhaps I was imagining that.

While the Elysian Fields are the final resting place for the virtuous in Greek mythology, none of Streetcar’s characters can find peace in this claustrophobic and combustible setting. Stanley, though, who terrorizes his friends and family with bursts of violence (he’s prone to punctuating family arguments by smashing things), is not simply a villain here. Instead, Mouawad’s production stays true to Williams’ belief that humans in general make choices that cause harm. Along these lines, large and small unkindnesses are sprinkled throughout the show, from the moment that neighbor Eunice (Merehuka Manurere) pointedly blows cigarette smoke in Blanche’s face to the shockingly cold and brutish nurse (Laura Nelsen) who twists Blanche’s arm behind her back. And that’s aside from the unspoken knowledge behind the play that once upon a time Belle Reve prospered from the labor of slaves.
Even Stella, with her love for Blanche, whom she’s always embracing with genuine warmth, and the gentlemanly Mitch (played with a sweet dignity by Jeff Giberson) succumb to cruel actions. When Eunice calmly reassures Stella that she had no choice but to turn her back on her sister, she calls to mind the way we see houseless people as disposable objects to be swept off the streets and out of our sight.
The production is dedicated to the families and victims of the January 1, 2025 attack in New Orleans, prompting us to wonder, as Williams did in an essay first published in the London Observer in 1957, “… why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in.” While Williams’ script can’t fully answer that, Mouawad’s production offers us a shimmering thread of hope by reminding us we have artists who dedicate their lives to sharing their spellbinding creations with us.
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“A Streetcar Named Desire” will be onstage at Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave. in Portland, through February 2. For tickets, go to https://www.imagotheatre.com/tickets.html or call 503-231-9581.
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