My spirits, and expectations, were high this Saturday night when I attended the crowded 8 p.m. showing of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Walnut Street Theatre. With my mind full of the 1951 timeless Elia Kazan film version, with Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh, I possessed a truly stellar, optimistically hopeful standard for the evening’s performance.

The curtain opened on a small, messy house, and this scenery proved to be the setting for the majority of the play. The lighting was dim and dull, all except the red lampshade later introduced to give the room romance and magic. In this one room set, Blanch Dubois is reunited with her sister Stella, and she soon after meets Stella’s aggressive, short-tempered husband Stanley Kowalski.

The role of Stanley is not one to be taken lightly and I feel Jeffrey Coon did a good job with it, considering the demanding difficulty of playing an abusive alcoholic; not to mention Marlon Brando is kind of a hard act to follow.

When he walked on stage, he didn’t exactly incite the same commanding attention and oozing sexuality of Brando and Coon sounded less like him and more like Ray Romano. However, as the play continued, Jeff got a much better handle on the part and it turned out that he had a great dramatic range, but was perhaps a bit too comic relief and not enough frighteningly intimidating during a few key points, like when he “clears” the dinner table by throwing his plate across the room.

I soon realized that his comic take on the Stanley character went along with the rest of this production’s less serious, more amusing handling of the material. It seemed like the Kowalski had a lot of depth in this version as he could be funny and light-hearted often not just abusive and harsh.

I quickly noticed Stella’s southern accent came and went, more frequently, but Blanche’s voice was dead-on and actually sounded exactly, I mean exactly like Vivian Leigh.

I have to say that Blanche stole the show, giving a definitive, maybe even career-making performance. There was a lot more background and history for her in this play than in the film, especially when she retells the story of catching her former, deceased husband with another man.

Blanche is clearly being haunted by her past, her out of control emotions, her failed, tragic marriage and her bizarre relationship with Stanley. Something always seems to be bothering her, like she has something to hide and this anxious insecurity is both revealed and fueled by excessive drinking, deluded fantasies, constant bathing and incessant lying.

Between scenes, there was occasional representational evidence of New Orleans street life, like interracial couples kissing, a prostitute snorting cocaine, a criminal outrunning a policeman and the like.

The three intermissions were not necessary, as the second act seemed like a mere ten or fifteen minutes long. Interlude jazz music and bustling urban noises set the mood nicely, but could have been more prominent, especially during intense, sexually charged scenes. There was also a flowing, very believable transition of scenes and passage of time.

The famous Stella scene was fairly well done, but could have used amore dramatic buildup, with more than one drawn out, overdone, “STELLA!” The climatic scene with Stanley and Blanche was probably the most intense, bordering on humorous, yet it was not that clear that he rapes her at this point when Stanley just lifts her up violently right before the curtain closes and then the incident is only very briefly mentioned in the following, concluding scene.

In the end, it seems completely understood that Stella will stay with Stanley and they will continue living the same crazy, wild life, only now with an innocent child in the picture; a truly tragic ending. “We just gotta keep going, no matter what.”

This little piece of advice did emphasis the hopeless, apathy of these characters, who never strive for anything more than what they’ve grown to settle for and never realize that they can regain morality and dignity and instead just accept their situation and animalistic urges after lowering their standards to accommodate the harshness of reality.

Meanwhile, the sensitive, caring compassionate character, Blanche, must be the crazy one, unable to deal with her overwhelming feelings or the poetic, empathetic heart that ultimately all drive her insane.

The only way to live with the disheartening coldness of this painful New Orleans world is by killing this compassionate sense and losing all romanticism and idealistic fantasy.

Though Blanche did seem crazed, she was relatable, just sensitive and exposed to too much negative, a sweet soul taken advantage of a destroyed.

As a whole, this version could have been a lot more serious, with less comic relief and less cheesy add-in material, like when Blanche concluded a dramatic, bordering suicidal monologue with “I want to die of an unripe grape”.

I actually noticed several lines added not in the original version, usually for comical relief, and with a certain cheesy, mood lightning. This was a poor choice, I believe, as it took away from the intensity and tone of the piece, and lessened the dramatic impression the story’s tragic premise yields.

They did a fine job besides this slightly weakening stylistic choice, and the dramatic intensity was very real, and present throughout. Brando would be pleased, as was I. Bravo!