Tennessee Williams mercilessly reveals Blanche's downward spiral in A Streetcar Named Desire , a work that continues to cut close to the bone. Theatre in the Square's production of the play has some distracting frills at its edges, but they don't detract from the excellent elements at the center. As Blanche, Jessica Phelps West is directed by her mentor, former UGA drama professor August Staub, and their collaborations consistently bring out the best in the actress. West similarly shone in their productions of Private Lives and Hedda Gabler , also at Theatre in the Square, and her performance here is superbly calibrated. In playing the deluded Dixie belle, West never oversells Blanche's artifice of etiquette, keeping the role from caricature.
Funerals are quiet.
Allen O'Reilly is nicely cast as Mitch, a semi-comic figure who may be the last gentleman in New Orleans and is genuinely anguished at learning the details of Blanche's sordid past. Blanche represents the last gasp of the New South, a way of life Stanley is happy to finish off. Pittard lives up to the coarseness of Stanley Kowalski, tucking cigarettes behind his ear or wiping his face with beer. Pittard captures Stanley's sexual magnetism and unexpected cunning, but he's always a life-sized bully and never emerges as an emblematic figure like Blanche. The stage, with wrought-iron balcony outside windows, perfectly suggests a French Quarter apartment, in which two rooms are supposedly separated by a curtain.