The National Ballet of Canada has revived John Neumeier's raw-edged balletic revisioning of A Streetcar Named Desire, inspired by the landmark 1947 play by American writer Tennessee Williams.
Principal Dancer Sonia Rodriguez is retiring after a career with the company spanning more than three decades. This work has been mounted at her request to give her a chance to bow out with a favourite role -- and one which she chose precisely because it places her on stage alongside so many of her colleagues in the company. I did not see Rodriguez dancing in the Saturday matinee. The National Ballet's management, for whatever reason or reasons, does not seem to feel that the audience of the Saturday matinees is worthy of being allowed to share in such special occasions as this.
This is one major dance work which I suspect may be much more rewarding to the performers than to many of the audience. Although the sheer force of the work impressed me on first acquaintance, I had a strong feeling, after a second viewing, that it lacks staying power.
In light of that feeling, it's intriguing to me to compare the impact of Streetcar (originally staged in 1983) with the same choreographer's Nijinsky (2000), another work which largely takes place inside the tortured, disintegrating mind of the principal character.
The two pieces share many of the same elements: multiple characters in multiple different dreamlike actions all on stage at once, repetition of key scenes or sequences, the use of rapidly repeated movements of hands or feet, and -- overall -- a dance work which definitely calls upon the entire company's resources to perform.
Why, then, do I now find Streetcar so enervating and grueling to sit through when Nijinsky remains, for me, endlessly involving and thought-provoking?
I'd have to start with the source material. For many years now, I've had little patience with people who always want to live in the past, an attitude which lies at the root of Blanche's disintegration. Williams has never been one of my favourite writers because his characters so often seem to go there and get stuck in that groove. Blanche DuBois in particular spends a large part of the performance actively trying to deny and defy the changes that are overcoming her life. My observation is that when you try to do that, life runs you over and flattens you into the ground -- because change is life's only constant.
By contrast, Nijinsky charts the meteoric career of a dynamic artist, a man who pushed against and through the accepted limitations of his time in all kinds of directions -- and came apart in the process.
Second place goes to the music. Nijinsky uses two orchestral masterworks of the Russian school. Streetcar employs two main works: Prokofiev's Visions fugitives in the first act, and (in the second act) the tremendously noisy and unpleasant Symphony # 1, composed (I'm giving the composer the benefit of the doubt) by Alfred Schnittke. It's loud, clangorous, dissonant, nerve-grinding "music" and it goes on and on and on like that, making the second act of the ballet into an hour-long journey to auditory hell. Worse still, it is all played (by the choreographer's express wish) on the sound system, not by a live orchestra -- an ultimate expression of Brechtian epic detachment.
By the time he came to create Nijinsky (17 years later), Neumeier had discovered, whether knowingly or not, that the states of mental deterioration could quite readily be expressed through more concordant music,played live in the pit -- leaving the tension to be generated by the clashes between dance and music, not by the volume of noise pouring out of a speaker.
Finally, in Nijinsky, the traffic jams of conflicting and competing multiple scenes happening at the same time are very much integral to the story of the great dancer's progressive mental deterioration. All are taking place, to some degree, in his mind. In Streetcar, much of the onstage traffic seems completely external, with the repeated street parades in New Orleans basically standing in as moving scenic backdrop to the main action -- a far more distracting and less integrated dramatic concept.
To sum up: both times I have watched the National Ballet stage Streetcar, I have respectfully admired the achievement of the dancers without truly loving or valuing any of the characters, or any of what I see depicted on stage. And if you can't care about the characters, why bother to go?
So now, to get down to the actual performances which I saw on Saturday afternoon.
Svetlana Lunkina gave a riveting performance as Blanche in the scenes where her uncertainty and loss of identity are mostly to the fore. The edgy quality of her every movement is the essential element here, and Lunkina's performance captured that element in spades. I would have welcomed a clearer expression of the seductive quality of the character -- it was there when needed, but much more muted. Her shock at the sight of her husband, Allan, being kissed by his male friend, was both convincing and startling. Most of all, Lunkina brought a dynamic feeling of desperation to her frantic attempts to rescue her ancestors and set the chairs right at the end of the first act.
The playful and the seductive were both keynotes of Chelsy Meiss in the contrasting role of Blanche's sister, Stella. Already, in the first act at the plantation of Belle Reve, Meiss clearly showed that she had outgrown this tired old world of traditions without any purpose and social postures without any meaning. In the second act, seduction turned to raw sexuality (not pornography, it is still dance) in her bedroom scene with her husband, Stanley.
The role of Stanley was performed by Piotr Stanczyk. In his reading, the man swaggers without cause and sneers without reason -- a classic example of a lout who's had to settle for being the big fish in a very small pond. Everything about him, from his boxing scene with Mitch to the climactic and horrifying rape scene with Blanche (again, not pornographic), showed him displaying his desperate need to be in control, in charge, on top of the heap. Stanczyk scores points with his sneering face every time Stanley flexes to prove his power, if only to himself. This performance was admirable not least for Stanczyk's spot-on control of the numerous strange and difficult twists, turns, jumps, and the like which the choreographer has laid out for this role.
Donald Thom proved convincing in the nice-guy role of Mitch. His sudden dramatic revulsion and departure when Stanley tells him all about Blanche's "friends" at the Flamingo Motel was a powerful change of tone and movement alike.
Harrison James gave a poetic account of Allan Grey in the first act. His movements flowed gracefully in contrast to the more sudden actions of other characters. Together with Christopher Gerty (or was it Ben Rudisin?) in the role of Allan's Friend, he gave an intense and involving account of the long dance sequence in which they gradually draw closer and closer to each other. It's an inspired little touch from Neumeier to have the dancer who portrays Allan reappear at the very end as the doctor who comes to escort Blanche to the asylum.
Streetcar is, without question, a company piece, and the various members of the company provided effective support to the main cast in roles like the ancestors, the dancers in the ballroom, the street parade, and others.
Powerful? Undeniably. Strongly performed? Definitely. Memorable? For sure.
Do I want to see it again? Sorry to all those who enjoy staging and performing A Streetcar Named Desire, but no. For me, twice is definitely more than enough.
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