MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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A Streetcar Named Desire, Young Vic/National Theatre at Home
Gillian Anderson is riveting as the damaged goods in a Tennessee Williams classic
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
WHEN A Streetcar Named Desire premiered in New York in 1947, it was hailed as a sensation. It went on to become a 20th-century tour de force and as director Benedict Andrews demonstrates in this Young Vic production, it is an abiding masterpiece.
Its subtle updating is an astonishingly daring approach given writer Tennessee Williams’s precision in its original setting.
But it works, for although taking place within a few prescient defined square yards in post-war New Orleans, where the poetry and idiom of the language set it alight, the modern referencing of contemporary clothes, bathroom accoutrements, timeless music and cordless phones only serve to highlight the play’s classic qualities.
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