A revival of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire opens at the National on Oct. 8.
In it, Glenn Close plays Blanche du Bois, who (like her character, Norma Desmond, in Lloyd Webber's musical of Sunset Boulevard) is a woman past her prime and with a relatively weak hold on reality. Mentally troubled and sexually needy, Blanche comes from a genteel Southern family that has fallen on hard times.
As a result, she has to move in with her sister, Stella, who has married beneath her and lives with her brutish, sexy husband in a poor quarter of New Orleans. When Blanche's world and that of her brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski (Ian Glen) collide, the result is devastating.
A Streetcar Named Desire plays at the National's Olivier Theatre until Nov. 23.
—By Theatrenow
