Word: rabbe
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...their second offering of the season, the Group 20 Players have come up with an unusual production of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prizewinning play A Streetcar Named Desire. Feeling that twelve years have considerably changed the values of the play, Ellis Rabb, in a directorial note in the program, explains that he believes Streetcar to be a play about man's "procreative power" as represented by Stanley Kowalski rather than Blanche DuBois' "vulnerability." Unfortunately, this thesis does not play successfully throughout, and the result is an energetic but uneven production. "The total horror of Blanche's affliction...
Cavada Humphrey, an excellent and versatile actress, gives us Blanche as Mr. Rabb describes her but hardly as Mr. Williams does. She is vulnerable all right, but there is no love or tenderness in this Blanche. A dimension has been omitted. What should be a woman desperate for love, protection, and security is merely a woman desperate for sex. As conceived by Mr. Rabb, it is difficult to imagine Blanche's remaining faithful even to Mitch, her Rosenkavalier, the man she wants so desperately to marry...
...attempt to remove all traces of pity for Blanche because he feels "Pity is indecisive [and] today is an age of decision," Mr. Rabb has removed all traces of nobility from his heroine and thereby subjected here to some most undeserved laughter...
Most productions of the play whip up the comedy and farce furiously, and abridge or soft-pedal the Claudio-Hero plot. Other things being equal, this may be the best solution--it is certainly the easiest. But Rabb has favored or scrimped no element in the play; he has lavished as much care on the serious as on the comic and farcical aspects. Consequently we can best see the play as it really is: when the lines soar, this production soars; when the writing flags, so does the production. The director's decision was daring, dangerous, and difficult...
...Rabb and the players are fortunate to have the absolutely stunning, three-story set, complete with lanterns and garden swing, designed by William D. Roberts. And it takes Gilbert Hemsley's lighting very well, abetted in one night scene by four real flambeaux...