• Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Liv Ullman, starring Cate Blanchett as Blanche DuBois, closing day after tomorrow at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. From the NYT:

The lady who lives for illusion has never felt more real. Playing that immortal bruised Southern lily Blanche DuBois, in Liv Ullmann’s heart-stopping production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Cate Blanchett soars spectacularly on the gossamer wings of fantasies that allow her character to live with herself. But you never doubt for a second that this brave, silly, contradictory and endlessly compelling woman is thoroughly and inescapably of this world....Ms. Ullmann and Ms. Blanchett have performed the play as if it had never been staged before, with the result that, as a friend of mine put it, “you feel like you’re hearing words you thought you knew pronounced correctly for the first time.”

A commenter on the NYT article brings up this point:

It seems to me that no one ever writes about Blanche's alcoholism, as she clearly is an alcoholic. The production last night made clear, far more than the film version, that one of the major problems Blanche has, and a probable cause/aggravator of her mental illness is her drinking. To me, Blanche is not some mysterious character. She's a drunk, like those you'll find anywhere—self-absorbed and -deluded, mentally frayed, a mess. Go to any AA meeting and you'll find any number of people who used to be just like Blanche, who ended up in psych wards, all of it.

This aspect of Blanche is addressed in Ben Brantley's review, with a passage that suggests how Blanchett might navigate the forever problematic rape scene:

This Blanche is no passive victim. She knows herself painfully well, which makes her both funnier and sadder than most Blanches. Always, though, we are aware of her knowing that standing up and staying sane are merely provisional; she could topple over at any second. That delicate balance assumes its most wrenching form in her climactic face-off with Stanley, as Blanche tries to defy not only her predatory brother-in-law but also the drunkenness that keeps pulling her to the floor. Gravity is not on her side.

Does anyone have a private jet and weird, powerful New York theater connections and wanna do me a favor?