Fantasy, imagination, realism and lies collide in Tennessee Williams’ enduring classic of American playwriting, A Streetcar Named Desire.
Brought to The Blue Room in Lincoln this October, and accompanied by a live band, a play often lauded as one of the best ever written will be staged by The Asylum Players and transport the audience to 1950s New Orleans. A world of beauty and fantastical culture, mixed with harsh realism and the brutality of forgotten dreams.
Blanche DuBois, fading southern belle, arrives at the home of her sister, Stella, and her animalistic husband Stanley, under a cloud of intrigue and deception. A short visit turns into weeks and then months.
Tensions flair in the hot southern climate. Lies trip from tongues as easily as liquor pours into glasses and the whisper of insanity flits through the humid Louisiana air. Will anyone escape? Do they want to? Can you actually be mad if the world is already insane?
Stephen Gillard, artistic director of The Blue Room and Asylum Players, said: “I absolutely love to take a piece as intense and claustrophobic as Streetcar and put it on The Blue Room stage. This is a hot, violent, close world that Williams has created.
“Blanche, Stanley and Stella are such iconic characters and we wanted to explore who actually is the “insane” member of that trio. The fantasist Blanche, with her lies and sordid past; the “realist” Stanley with his destructive temper and violent passions; or Stella the “pragmatist,” who tries to keep the peace without ever truly realising there’s a war being enacted and she’s already picked a side.
“The themes of sanity vs insanity, realism vs fantasy, truth vs lies, colliding through the characters of Blanche, Stanley and Stella.”
A Streetcar Named Desire is at The Blue Room, 16th – 18th & 23rd – 25th October 2025.
