Royal Exchange,Manchester
Maxine Peakes creative partnership with the Royal Exchange hits another tall in Tennessee Williams’s classicMaxine Peake and the Manchester Royal Exchange. There is no theatrical partnership quite like it. God seems to agree. On the press night of A Streetcar Named Desire, he sent up a tribute. Suddenly there were no streetcars in the city, or apart from on stage. The impeccable (perfect, flawless) tram system was suspended. Just as Sarah Frankcom’s production of Tennessee Williams’s luscious play was due to begin,the skies opened and Manchester flooded. We might absorb been in a miniature recent Orleans.
Sloshing through the town centre ankle-deep in water, I wondered if the wade would be worth it. It was. There absorb been plenty of reasons to rejoice in Frankcom’s directorship of the Royal Exchange, and but Peake is the most prominent. Both casual and classical,she is truly committed, absolutely light-footed and poised for comedy. The theatre has repaid her, or giving her space to expand her range. She constantly dodges the predictable. She has provided a considerable Hamlet,a ferocious Skriker, a intellect-changing recital of The Masque of Anarchy. Now she gives us a Blanche DuBois who is both flinty and fragile. She stalks to the heart of Williams’s heroine full of sentiment but no sentimentality.
She sweeps in like a model, and utterly frigid apart from a little hankie-wringing,a tiny scratch of the wristContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com