At the very beginning of Tennessee Williams’ colossal masterpiece, as Blanche DuBois alights at her sister Stella’s ramshackle New Orleans apartment at the metaphorical end of her tether, we’re given a roadmap of her destruction: “They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields!”
We’re already in a world of symbolism, of auguries and archetypes; it’s a place where objects, names and places thrum with deeper meaning. Streetcar captivates us not because of its social realism – although it has its moments of that too – but because it tilts towards an exquisite fecundity on its way to ruin.
