Streetcar named desire

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE And so it was I entered the broken world To trace the visionary company of love, its voice An instant in the wind [I know not whither hurled] But not for long to hold each desperate choice. HART CRANE The Broken Tower THE CHARACTERS The first London production of this play was at the Aldwych Theatre on Wednesday, 12 October 1949, with the following cast: Blanche DuBoisVivien Leigh Stella Kowalski Rerw Asfwrson Stanley Kowalski Bonar Colleam Harold Mitchell [Mitch] Bernard Braden Eunice Hubbel Eileen Dale Steve Hubbel Lyn Euans Pablo Gonzales Theodore Bikel Negro woman Brwe Howard A strange man [doctor] Sidney Monckton A strange woman [nurse] Mona Lilian A young collector John Farrest A Mexican woman Eileen Way Directed by Laurence Olivier Setting and lighting byJo meilziner Costumes by Beatrice Dawson SCENE ONE The exterior of a two-storey corner building on a street in New Orleans which is named Elysian Fields and runs between the L & N tracks and the river. The section is poor but unlike corresponding sections in other American cities, it has a raffish charm. The houses are mostly white frame, weathered grey, with rickety outside stairs and galleriesand quaintly ornamented gables. This building contains two flats, upstairs and down. Faded white stairs ascend to the entrances of both. It is first dark of an evening early in May. The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully

attenuates the atmosphere of decay. You can almost feelthe warm breath of the brown river beyond the river warehouses with their faint redolences of bananas and coffee. A corresponding air is evoked by the music of Negro entertainers at a bar-room around the corner. In this part of New Orleans you are practically always just around the corner, or a few doors down the street, from a tinny piano being played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers.This blue piano' expresses the spirit of the life which goes on here. [Two women, one white and one coloured, are taking the air on the steps of the building. The white woman Eunice, who occupies the upstairs/lot; the coloured woman a neighbour, for New Orleans is a cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races in the old part of town. Above the music of the‘blue piano’, the voices of people on the street can be heard overlapping.] Negro woman [to Eunice]: ... she says St Barnabas would send out his dog to lick her and when he did she'd feel an Icy cold wave all up an' down her. Well, that night when – A Man [to a sailor]: You keep right on going and you'll find it. You'll hear them tapping on the shutters. Sailor [to negro woman and Eunice]: Where'sthe Four Deuces? Vendor: Red hot! Red hots Negro woman: Don't waste your money in that clip joint Sailor: I've got a date there. Vendor: Re-e-ed h-o-o-t! Negro woman: Don't let them sell you a Blue Moon cock- tail or you won't go out on your own feet [Two men come round the comer, Stanley Kowalski and Mitch. They are about twenty-eight or thirty years old, roughly dressed in blue denim work clothes.Stanley carries his bowling jacket and a red-stained package from a butcher's.] Stanley [to Mitch]: Well, what did he say? Mitch; He said he'd give us even money.

Stanley: Naw! We gotta have odds! [They stop at the foot of the steps.} Stanley [bellowing}: Hey, there! Stella, Babyl [Stella comes out on the first-floor landing, a gentle young woman, about twenty-five, and of a backgroundobviously quite different from her husband's.] Stella [mildly]: Don't holler at me like that. Hi, Mitch. Stanley: Catch Stella: What? Stanley: Meat! [He heaves the package at her. She cries out in protest but manages to catch it: then she laughs breathlessly. Her husband and his companion hose already started back around the comer.] Stella [calling after him}: Stanley! Where are you going? Stanley:...