Warning to “Streetcar” passengers…

If you were looking to pick up Tennessee Williams’ “Streetcar” at the Théâtre de l’Odéon, you’ll be surprised by the “Tramway” that takes you, not to any Elysian Fields, but to director Krzysztof Warlikowski’s fragmented, stylized and vaguely nightmarish adaptation of Williams’ masterpiece. While any return to the legendary “Streetcar Named Desire”, which earned Williams a Pulitzer (1948) and launched the career of a prowling, virile animal named Marlon Brando, has to contend with those legends and a lingering iconography (one reviewer of this production got excited over actor Andrzej Chyra’s “tee-shirt à la Marlon Brando”), Warlikowski’s freestyle make-over of such a finely constructed text as this gives cause for wonder, especially when the results are as dissatisfying as these.

Not content to merely truncate the original, Warlikowski goes boldly in the opposite direction, adding close to an hour of “reflections” on Williams’ themes, drawing from texts as disparate as letters written by Gustav Flaubert, an interview with jazz singer Eartha Kitt, Sophocles’ “Oedipus at Colonus” and St. Matthew’s Gospel, not to mention four utterly didactic musical selections, including Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” (1975). Letting a great work speak for itself seems impossible for Warlikowski here.

Moreover, the interpretation he brings is a gross simplification of William’s preoccupations with illusion/reality/disillusion and the replacement of romantic antebellum codes of conduct by a self-made proletarian individualism. Sex is the only point of reference here, beginning with Blanche’s clear depiction as a whore: seated on a stool, legs spread, in a black negligee, facing a glass wall. Played by Isabelle Huppert as a washed-out party girl (and whose gorgeous wardrobe, furnished by Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior, is a too tempting, over-exaggeration of the faded ball gowns Blanche desperately recycles into service), she begs nor earns neither our pity nor our sympathy. Stella (Florence Thomassin) is a trash calendar pin-up to Chyra’s merely cruel Stanley (an incongruous casting error, given Warlikowski’s chosen emphasis). The cast is rounded out by a skinheaded, kick-boxing Mitch and the neighbor lady Eunice (Renate Jett) who doubles as the lounge act, on a slick and shiny, retractable set that is simultaneously bowling alley, bathroom and bedroom, filmed in real-time and projected behind the action.

In short, too much going on and not enough of what matters. For a production that cost as much as this one obviously did, the only thing Warlikowski gets right is the excess that finally burned Williams out.

"Un Tramway", to April 3, Tues-Sat, 8 pm, Sun, 3 pm, Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, Place de l’Odéon, 6e, Mº Odéon, 18€-32€, tel: 01.44.85.40.40.

Photo Credit: Pascal Victor/ArtComArt