Being Blanche: Intiman's "Streetcar" production offers King Lear of roles for women

A case study:

Female, 30-ish.

Daintily dressed in a "white suit with a fluffy bodice," white gloves and a hat — the perfect attire for a 1940s "summer tea or cocktail party" in the upscale Garden District of New Orleans.

Cultivated Southern accent. Old-school manners. Prone to anxiety. A delicate beauty — if you don't look at her in "strong light."

Psychosexual issues. Post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Dead broke.

So might read the file on Blanche DuBois, who next to Scarlett O'Hara is the most iconic of beleaguered Southern belles in the annals of American drama.

The wilted magnolia blossom in the perennial play "A Streetcar Named Desire," Blanche is one of several flamboyantly mythic female creations wrought by the late American playwright Tennessee Williams.

And since she first appeared on a Broadway stage, as played by the actress Jessica Tandy in the 1947 premiere of the work, Blanche has been subjected to endless literary analyses, drag impersonations and psychiatric dissections.

Playing her layers

She has also been a favorite role, and a daunting one, for several generations of intrepid American actresses in their prime, eager to define a complicated gal some have termed the King Lear of parts for women.

This month, Angela Pierce joins their ranks in a rare local production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" at Intiman Theatre.

Staged by Intiman's new associate director, Sheila Daniels, this will be the first major "Streetcar" in town since a 1991 version at the same theater. It was directed then by former Intiman artistic head Elizabeth Huddle, with Julia Fletcher as Ms. DuBois.

Though we haven't seen much of her lately, Blanche has been alive, and unwell, on screens and stages since Williams first conjured her.

"I simply had the vision of a woman in her late youth," the playwright once noted. "She was sitting in a chair all alone by a window with the moonlight streaming in on her desolate face, and she'd been stood up by the man she planned to marry... "

From that image, Williams fashioned a play he once titled "The Poker Game" — for the card games held by the drama's alpha male, Blanche's brother-in-law and nemesis, Stanley Kowalski.

A ruthless, sexy brute competing with Blanche for the attentions of her pregnant sister, Stella, Stanley is also a monumental role — especially for anyone trying to measure up to the incendiary Stanley forged by the hunky young Marlon Brando on stage and film. (A newcomer to Intiman, New Zealand native Jonno Roberts, will play the part here.)

But while "Streetcar" seesaws between two powerhouse adversaries, Blanche is the more enigmatic, elusive figure. Seeking shelter with Stella in a steamy, working-class milieu in New Orleans, Blanche has lost her job, her Old South ancestral home and what was left of her tattered dignity. She is making her last stand in the French Quarter.

Said actress Glenn Close, who played Blanche in a 2002 production in London, on National Public Radio: "She is not physically strong anymore and she is certainly emotionally and psychologically fragile, but she's not giving up. She just doesn't give up."

Victim or villain?

Deciding exactly how weak or tough Blanche is, how flirtatious with Stanley or repelled by him, how charming or pathetic, how much the perpetrator or the victim of the sexual and psychic violence that erupts in the Kowalski household, was a tall order for Tandy (who earned a Tony in the part).

It has not gotten easier for the many famous actresses who followed Tandy in the role.

On the cinematic record we find the harrowing, moving portrait of Blanche by Vivien Leigh, Brando's co-star in the 1951 film.

It is tempting to credit the greatness of Leigh's multifaceted, desperately poignant Blanche to the performer's own battles with mental illness. But Leigh's work is finely crafted, honed over time by playing Blanche in the first British stage version of "Streetcar," directed by her then-husband Laurence Olivier.

Elia Kazan, who directed Leigh in the movie, thought she had a "small talent," but added: "She'd have crawled over broken glass if she thought it would help her performance. In the scenes that counted, she was excellent."

Playing Blanche today is akin to a coming-of-middle-age rite of passage for our finest actresses — most at least a decade older than the character by the time they get the chance.

A sampling of other notable Blanches, who steered the part their own way: Tallulah Bankhead, Rosemary Harris (who called the role "very lonely," because "there is nobody rooting for Blanche"), Ann-Margret (for TV) and Jessica Lange (on Broadway and TV, opposite Alec Baldwin). More recently, Frances McDormand (in Ireland), Patricia Clarkson and Natasha Richardson have taken up the cause.

The funniest Blanche? Surely it was British drag performer Betty Bourne in a gender-kinked adaptation of "Streetcar" titled "Belle Reprieve," at Seattle's Theatre Off Jackson in 1991.

Blanche gone wrong

But in "straight" versions, Richardson's 2005 portrayal on Broadway opposite John C. Reilly illustrated some common pitfalls even excellent, accomplished actresses encounter while being Blanche.

From her arrival on Stella's doorstep to Blanche's famous final utterance as she's carted off to a mental hospital ("I have always depended on the kindness of strangers"), the lovely and vital Richardson just wasn't physically or spiritually wrung out enough to end up convincingly ravaged and deranged.

Also, Richardson's stage chemistry with the game but off-the-mark Reilly never heated up above lukewarm. And when there's no combustible erotic tension in "Streetcar," the script's sweaty-baroque, 1940s quasi-realism can feel mannered and stale.

Who — and what — comes next?

Just as you hope certain great male thespians will do Hamlet before they're too creaky, you have to think it's sad that such towering talents as Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren didn't get their Broadway crack at Blanche. As for future Blanches, Britney Spears — yes, her — has been mentioned as the right type ... but only for the art-imitates-life effect.

It may not matter who slips into Blanche's frayed feather boa and satin pumps next; the character is already part of our theatrical DNA, and an irrepressible pop-cultural symbol. Madge played her, in a famous episode of TV's "The Simpsons." Joni Mitchell alluded to her in the song "Sunny Sunday." In Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's film "All About My Mother," a production of "Streetcar" and an actress playing Blanche were instrumental to the plot.

Blanche, that shopworn goddess of the Old South, is probably going to be with us forever. But she's so mercurial, there's no proven formula to bring her to life, and never will be. You can only approach any mounting of "A Streetcar Named Desire," including the new one at Intiman, hoping to be fascinated and moved by her. And asking: What sort of stranger will Blanche DuBois be this time?

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com