Neil Bowen on (Edited )
The Guardian, Michael Billington, October 9, 2002
You can see Tennessee Williams's Blanche DuBois in one of two ways: as an embodiment of the poetic spirit destroyed by crude reality or as a southern snob tragically forced to bite the dust. The greatness of Glenn Close's performance in Trevor Nunn's fine revival at the Lyttelton is that it embraces these, and many other, contradictions.
Like all first-rate actors, Close takes hair-raising risks; and in the first half, as she arrives to stay with sister Stella in a teeming sector of New Orleans known as Elysian Fields, you can see why she would grate on the nerves of her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski.
But, having established Blanche as a patronising intruder, Close almost literally strips away the layers of affectation and pretence. And what she shows us is a woman who lies as a protection against solitude and desperation.
The trajectory of Close's magnificent performance is to show a woman who finally acknowledges her limitless capacity for self-delusion.
To bring out the comedy and the tragedy of Blanche, the fake grandeur and the genuine pain, is a great achievement. But Close is much helped by Nunn's production which turns the play into a tenement symphony and which shows the surrounding life of the quarter as he did with Catfish Row in Porgy and Bess.
A great American play about the lies we all need to sustain our precarious existence has been well served. And, even if Iain Glen has a natural grace slightly at odds with Stanley's crude vigour, he brings out the character's ultimate cruelty.
The Times, Benedict Nightingale, 9 October 2002
Glenn Close [gave] a performance that was incisive yet passionate, intelligent yet deeply moving.
In one corner is Stanley Kowalski; in Iain Glen's fine, fierce performance, not a straightforward yob but a sexually besotted husband who, thanks to his limited imagination and quick temper, sees in Blanche only pretension, folly and a threat to his marriage. In the other is Close's Blanche, who is a lot more than the cracked belle that, starting with Vivien Leigh in the movie, many actresses have made her.
Not that Close fails to embrace either the belle or the crackpot. When Blanche teeters nervously into the vividly evoked grot of the French Quarter, wearing a trim white suit, you feel some exotic moth is lost in the monkey house. When she finally puts on a shimmering gown in a deluded effort to regain self-respect, it's as if Miss Havisham has decided actually to wear her wedding cake.
But between those points Close also gives us a Blanche who, yes, can be arch, coy, embarrassingly flirtatious, but also has moments of surprising radiance, wry insight, defensive rage, and a pain and a wincing, palpitating desperation that leaves you, too, emotionally flattened. Southern magnolias seldom come as complex as this.
But Close couldn't flower if Trevor Nunn's direction hadn't combined with Christie's designs to create so rich a setting. A black woman sings the blues. A chimney sweep pushes a pram complete with brushes. A prostitute propositions a sailor. It could be fussy, but in fact it's liberating. Everywhere there's a hubbub - but above all in Blanche's soul.