Vasan, Anjana

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    A Ferocious Paul Mescal Stars in a Brutal ‘Streetcar’

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    Desire comes a distant second to violence in a Brooklyn revival of the Tennessee Williams classic.“The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost a turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay.”Not bloody likely.Those stage directions from Tennessee Williams’s published script for “A Streetcar Named Desire” may amount to a mission statement and an artist’s credo but, 78 years after the play’s debut, they are no longer marching orders.At any rate, no one follows them. The New Orleans neighborhood in which Williams set the action — called Elysian Fields, no less — has for decades been radically reimagined: as a shoe box, a hangar, a manga, a loo. In his New York Times review, Ben Brantley called that last one, directed by Ivo van Hove, “A Bathtub Named Desire.”Now Rebecca Frecknall, whose Broadway production of “Cabaret” is no one’s idea of subtle, takes up the cudgel. In the revival of “Streetcar” that opened Tuesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a transfer from London starring the ferocious Paul Mescal, she literalizes the idea of brutal relocation. You will not find a tender blue sky or even a white building, let alone any lyricism, on Madeleine Girling’s square, wood-plank set. Elevated on concrete blocks, in the gritty dark of the Harvey Theater, she makes the world of Stanley and Stella Kowalski — and of their frail interloper, Blanche DuBois — look like a boxing ring.There is some justice in that: Stanley is, after all, Williams’s half-despised, half-beloved icon of a brute. He enters the first scene bearing a package of bloody meat, which he throws at Stella to cook — a gesture she finds briefly annoying but that also turns her on. No less than her husband, she looks forward to making what he calls “noise in the night” and getting “the colored lights going.” That’s his kind of lyricism. And when Blanche, Stella’s impoverished older sister, arrives in desperation for an indefinite stay, we see its flip side as he sets out to destroy her because he can.In Anjana Vasan’s excellent performance as Stella, our critic writes, we sense her love for her sister, even more than the usual weak-tea toleration.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Off Broadway Shows to See in March: ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and More

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      Underwater drama, a daunting solo undertaking, a gaggle of students and a version of “The Cherry Orchard” that aims to recapture Chekhov’s winking tone.‘A Streetcar Named Desire’Many times we have asked, “Dear God, ‘Streetcar’ again?” And many times we have been reminded that Tennessee Williams’s haunting tale of desire and violence is presented often because it is a masterpiece. This latest production, a London import directed by Rebecca Frecknall (“Cabaret”), stars Paul Mescal (“Gladiator II”) as Stanley, Patsy Ferran (“Miss Austen”) as Blanche and Anjana Vasan as Stella. In a New York Times review of this production’s original run, Matt Wolf described it as being “deeply empathic” and served by an “electrifying” ensemble cast. (Through April 6, Brooklyn Academy of Music)‘Wine in the Wilderness’The necessary and illuminating rediscovery of Alice Childress’s work continues with this piece, directed by the Tony Award winner LaChanze — who, in 2021, starred in the belated Broadway premiere of Childress’s brilliant satire “Trouble in Mind.” Set in Harlem in 1964, as a riot turns the city red, “Wine in the Wilderness” actually premiered on Boston public television in 1969, as part of a series titled “On Being Black.” The story centers on the fraught relationship between a painter (Grantham Coleman, a terrific Benedick in Shakespeare in the Park’s “Much Ado About Nothing”) and his would-be model and muse (Olivia Washington). (Through April 13, Classic Stage Company)‘Deep Blue Sound’Set in a tight-knit community in the Pacific Northwest, Abe Koogler’s deceptively simple play about the mysterious disappearance of an orca pod requires a strong cast to evoke the group’s ties and bring the show fully alive. Such was the case in the premiere production a couple of years ago, as part of the Clubbed Thumb company’s Summerworks series. Luckily, some of the actors, led by the wondrous Maryann Plunkett, return for this encore run, along with worthy additions including Mia Katigbak and Miriam Silverman (a Tony winner for “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”). (Through March 29, Public Theater)‘Have You Met Jane Goodall and Her Mother?”In 1960, Jane Goodall set off to study chimpanzees in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) at the age of 26, yet that country’s government still required a chaperone. So Goodall took her mother, Vanne. Researching that story, the playwright Michael Walek discovered that the two women liked each other and got along, so at least his comedy shouldn’t rely on overused tropes of pent-up mother-daughter acrimony. Bonus: There is puppetry. (Through March 30, Ensemble Studio Theater)From left: Alyah Chanelle Scott, Kathryn Gallagher, Julia Lester, Havana Rose Liu and Kristine Froseth in the play “All Nighter.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘All Nighter’One of the spring’s most intriguing ensembles gathers Julia Lester (“Into the Woods”), Kathryn Gallagher (“Jagged Little Pill”), Kristine Froseth, Alyah Chanelle Scott and the rising star Havana Rose Liu (“Bottoms” and a staggering number of upcoming high-profile screen projects). They portray the friends and roommates assembled by the gifted comic playwright Natalie Margolin (whose star-studded pandemic Zoom play “The Party Hop” is available on YouTube) for a nightlong studying marathon fueled by Adderall, hummus and kibitzing. (Through May 18, Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Paul Mescal Rides ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ to Brooklyn

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      The award-winning production will begin performances in February as part of Brooklyn Academy of Music’s next season.Brooklyn Academy of Music next spring will present an Olivier Award-winning revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” starring Paul Mescal, the Irish actor, in the role made famous by Marlon Brando.The production is the high point of the next season at BAM, which, like many nonprofit arts organizations, has been struggling to rebuild after a period of economic challenges and leadership change.“Streetcar,” one of Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, imagines a down-on-her-luck Southern woman’s disruptive visit to the New Orleans home of her sister and brother-in-law. It was first staged on Broadway in 1947, and this latest revival began at London’s Almeida Theater in 2022, and then transferred to the West End in 2023. Not only did the production win an Olivier, but so did Mescal and Anjana Vasan for their portrayals of Stanley and Stella Kowalski. Vasan will join Mescal in Brooklyn, as will Patsy Ferran, reprising her London performance as Blanche DuBois.The critic Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, called the London production “an electrifying ensemble production.”Mescal, an Oscar nominee for “Aftersun,” is also known for the series “Normal People” and the film “All of Us Strangers,” but he is likely to become much better known this month because he is starring in “Gladiator II.” “Streetcar” is his American theater debut.The production, directed by Rebecca Frecknall, will return to the West End from Feb. 3 to 22 at the Noël Coward Theater before transferring to BAM where it is scheduled to run from Feb. 28 to April 6. The producers of the West End production, led by ATG Entertainment, a large British theater company with a growing presence in New York, are credited as presenting partners at BAM.Among the other highlights of the BAM season is a production of “The Threepenny Opera” performed by the Berliner Ensemble under the direction of Barrie Kosky. Joshua Barone, reviewing the production in Berlin for The New York Times, called it “hauntingly enjoyable.”BAM will also present “Macbeth in Stride,” Whitney White’s reimagining of Lady Macbeth “as an indomitable Black female icon.” The production was at Washington’s Shakespeare Theater Company last year; in The Washington Post, Celia Wren called it “an ingenious meditation on ambition and the Bard.”Both of those shows will be in April; the opera is being presented with St. Ann’s Warehouse, and the play is a co-production with Shakespeare Theater Company and Philadelphia Theater Company, both of which staged it last fall, and Yale Repertory Theater, which is staging it next month.There will also be dance (including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Batsheva Dance Company and the annual DanceAfrica event), music (including Max Richter), films and children’s programming. More

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      in Television

      Anjana Vasan Just Wants Stanley Tucci to Cook for Her

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      “Maybe I can engineer it where I work with him, and then he makes me a drink and a bowl of pasta,” the “We Are Lady Parts” actress said.The past three years have been good to Amina, the introverted scientist in London with rock-star dreams played by Anjana Vasan on the Peacock series “We Are Lady Parts.”Amina completed her Ph.D. in microbiology. She landed a job in stem-cell research. And she underwent a glow-up befitting the lead guitarist of an indie punk band made up of five Muslim women.Farewell, shrinking violet. Amina is in her “villain era” now.“She’s found this confidence, and it’s almost like a new pair of shoes that she’s breaking in,” Vasan, 37, said in a video interview. “She hasn’t quite found her landing yet.”The sitcom’s three-year hiatus was also good for Vasan — born in India, raised in Singapore and now living in London — who won a Olivier Award in 2023 for her performance as Stella in a revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire.”“We were determined for a show like this not to just be this anomaly, that the show with five women of color at the helm had to have another iteration — it had to go even deeper,” she said before explaining her fascination with YouTube wormholes, “Veep” on repeat, Townes Van Zandt’s music and the stationery she assembles before taking on a new job.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1The Art of Zarina HashmiZarina was the first time I’d seen someone’s art and gone, “Oh, wow, I love this.” Then I realized she was of Indian heritage herself. So much of her art is about borders and home and memory and place. There was something about a simple piece of art that spoke to me in a really visceral way.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More