A Streetcar Named Desire

Eden Court Theatre, Inverness

Mary Brennan

FIVE STARS

When Tennessee Williams dramatised Blanche DuBois's fall from Southern Belle grace into ravaged madness, his words made tainted poetry of her home, family, self respect and hoped-for love, being stripped away in the heat of conflicting desires. When director Nancy Meckler and choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa rose to the challenge (in 2102) of creating a dance-drama version of his play for Scottish Ballet, their collaboration drew on body language, symbolic details within the staging and a mood-setting score by Peter Salem - but, most of all, on the dancers. They were asked to extend their performances beyond delivering the steps, to flesh out character and narrative with an expressiveness that - with the one exception of Stanley's visceral outcry of "Stella! Stella!" - would never rely on Williams's text.

Last week, the company revived what has become one of their most deservedly acclaimed productions as part of a short UK tour - Edinburgh later this week, London at the end of the month - that you could say is a warm up for this Streetcar's eagerly awaited return to America. Warm up? It's already hot and smokin' - members of the original cast are now well under the skin of Williams's intentions, while newcomers are already up to speed with the Meckler-Ochoa concept of company-as-chorus (and stage-hands who conjure basic beer crates into every context from bedroom to bowling alley).

Eve Mutso's Blanche is, if anything, even more harrowing: if her gloriously pure classicism of line, always on pointe, marks her out as rooted in a bygone era, her clinging on to the hallmarks of fading elegance - the little hat, the lampshade on a bare bulb, the girly coquettishness - is like a perfumed snub to her working-class brother-in-law, Stanley. Erik Cavallari's Stanley is brute force made unnervingly complex - to the once-demure Stella (a lissomely sensual Sophie Martin), he's the swaggering bit of rough that liberates her own sexual energy, to Blanche he's the last straw. His degrading rape breaks her mentally and physically, and yes, it shocks. The whole company are in blisteringly fierce form: it's a triumph to leave you speechless.