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Liv Ullmann directs Cate Blanchett in Tennessee Williams’ classic
Cate Blanchett as Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire (Photo: Lisa Tomasetti)
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Famed Norwegian actor-director-author Liv Ullmann has played various heroines of her fellow countryman Henrik Ibsen—naturally. She has also performed Eugene O’Neill—perhaps not as obvious, but consider her long-time association with the great Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman, for whom she created performances of harrowing psychological intensity, and the O’Neill fit seems apt. But Ullmann has never played that other great American master, Tennessee Williams. She is now doing the next best thing—directing him. From Nov 27 through Dec 20, Ullmann’s staging of the Williams 1947 classic A Streetcar Named Desire will be visiting the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The production originated at Australia’s Sydney Theatre Company, with the formidable Cate Blanchett starring as the doomed and delusional Blanche DuBois (Blanchett, along with her husband, playwright Andrew Upton, are the theater’s co-artistic directors), and by all accounts, it’s a searing performance which has received excellent notices from Australian critics.
Speaking of searing, for most Americans, Williams’ play is veritably seared into our collective consciousness thanks to the classic 1951 Hollywood film directed by Elia Kazan, featuring two mega-legendary performances from the young Marlon Brando as Stanley and Vivien Leigh as Blanche. You’d think the intimidating shadow cast by the film is scary enough. So in addition, was never having played Williams of some concern for Ullmann? Apparently not. “I know a lot about him because I have read his plays, I’ve seen all the films,” the director explained from Oslo by phone. More to the point, Ullmann’s experience playing O’Neill fortuitously resulted in a side education in Williams in that her director was none other than José Quintero, the O’Neill specialist. “Quintero was one of Williams’ best friends and he told me a lot about [him] and working together.”
For many, the Williams sensibility is necessarily tied up with its distinctive setting—the American South—and Ullmann’s Scandinavian background couldn’t be further from those sights, smells, and textures. Yet the director feels she has a special understanding of the playwright. “Williams says—and it’s very much what I feel too—that people do not tend to see each other or understand each other because we are so full of our own egos, fears, and longings.” She continued, “Even when we hear someone else talk, we very often translate it into who we are.” Clearly, lying—both to others and to one’s self—is a crucial defense mechanism in the play to which Ullmann is both very sensitive and sympathetic. She believes that “if [the characters] had really known about each other, it would have been a much better future for all of these people. This is the most important thing for me in life—to find ways to connect with people and listen to each other.”
Focusing on such universal aspects of the play is also helpful when your cast and crew are Australian—a sensibility equally as different from Williams’ South as the director’s own Scandinavian roots. How did such a global project come about? Blanchett was slated to star in Ullmann’s film of Ibsen’s A Dollhouse, a project which ultimately fell through. But the two kept in touch, resolving to work together in the theater. One day over coffee day in London, the Australian actor suggested Streetcar, which surprised Ullmann. “I somehow didn’t think of [it], although it is one of my favorite plays, because I thought Cate was too young. I had this image of Vivien Leigh.” It’s true: the practicalities of theater production and casting make us forget that Williams saw the two sisters in their late 20s and early 30s.
With the project agreed upon, Ullmann started her preparations. Notwithstanding the bid for universality, certain specifics had to be tended to. Amongst other things, the director plunged into her own crash course in blues music, which was to be an important aspect of the production. And once rehearsals started, a voice coach was indeed brought in to work with the accents. Ullmann speaks glowingly about the entire cast and crew. But she expresses a particular awe for Blanchett. “She is almost a mystical soul. I don’t know many actors who can be as naked as she can be in her face, and look so beautiful,” she said. “And all I want is never to see any makeup on this face ever in my life, because I have never seen such beauty.”
Makeup versus nakedness—such notions resonate perfectly in a play in which interior truths ironically foster in its protagonist an elaborate but painfully human architecture of performance and self-delusion. In this way, Streetcar seems a fitting choice for Ullmann, whose entire creative output over the years has comprised one continued and poetic search for truthfulness, in all its forms. She sums it up this way: “You can completely disagree with how it is done physically with the set and the lighting, or with me, or with everyone. But you cannot disagree that what we are doing is, for us, real and truthful and recognizable.”
It’s doubtful Williams would argue with that.