In this week’s review of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ I mentioned “a colleague” with a different take on the show — and invited him to take our difference of opinion (via e-mail) to the blog. Here’s how that worked out:

Bob Mondello: Okay, I’ll take the bait, though you’ve hedged your phrasing enough that finding solid ground from which to mount a dissent is tricky. Let’s start with a point on which we agree: I can entirely subscribe to “not a perfect reading…[but] one of the clearest I’ve seen,” if by “clearest” you mean “least subtle.” Blanchett’s Blanche is gorgeous when first revealed at the right edge of the proscenium arch — a ghostly vision in white, stock-still with her suitcase — but by the time she’s trembled her way across the stage to enter her sister’s apartment she’s not just out of her element, but all too evidently bat-shit crazy. And the problem (the Post critic’s argument notwithstanding) with Blanche being bat-shit crazy in the first three minutes of Streetcar is that there’s still three hours and twelve minutes to go. Blanchett gets bigger with the tremors (my seatmate wondered at one point whether the character had Parkinson’s), and Ullmann’s staging gives her ever-grander gestures when she’s posturing about her station in life, but there’s really nowhere for her to go.

Trey: Oh, come now. If I meant “unsubtle,” I’d have said it. (Oh, wait, I did, but only when I was characterizing your position. ) What you see as “all too evidently bat-shit crazy,” I saw as a woman playing an alcoholic negotiating a dicey neighborhood after a long trip from rural Mississippi to the French Quarter. (A hundred and forty-one miles, in case you’re wondering.) She’s essentially been run out of her hometown; I’d guess she’s come by train (we learn later that the bus is beneath her); we know she’s had to take two different streetcars, and we know she doesn’t have any cash. And the first thing she reaches for, once she’s in the apartment, is the booze. She’s an emotional wreck in a strange place, and she’s at best hung over, at worst suffering from the DT’s. I don’t see how shaky and easily startled is a bad choice here. We’d believe a horse might shy in such a circumstance, and Blanche is nothing if not a thoroughbred.

Bob: Hmmmm…hadn’t considered your geographic advantage as a Southern boy – 141 miles…bus versus train, oy – still, it would’ve been nice to let us discover the character, rather than telegraphing the whole first act before she’s uttered six lines. And that’s just the start of the overkill. Ullmann seems to think we need things explained to the max, possibly because the play’s not burned into her Norweigian (and Blanchett’s Australian) consciousness the way it is into American theatergoers’. I don’t think the production is terrible (though I sure don’t get some bits, like the “Flores para los muertos” lady taking a 10-minute nap on the fire escape) but I do think it’s clumsy at times. I don’t understand why Mitch is allowed to steal focus by sobbing hysterically through a scene where the whole point is Blanche depending on the kindness of strangers, for instance. Think maybe he’s trying to get himself carted off to the asylum too?

Trey: Hey, I’m not here to defend Mitch. I thought that was weird, too. One outburst, maybe, but then shut up and sniffle in the corner, dude. But as for the flower-lady: Don’t you think Ullmann is reading that bit as a metaphor? That maybe (like the Varsouviana tune) the vendor is only there in Blanche’s head? Not how it’s written, of course, but it’s kosher to take liberties with the classics. And that moment has always been where Blanche’s terror of death and decay peaks, and when her last reserves fail. (Alternatively: The woman is a vendor, after all, and the fire escape isn’t a bad position to take up. It seems to be a busy corner, in this production.) I’ll tell you one moment you probably thought was over-the-top, but that I liked: the business with Blanche breaking away from the doctor and walking into the light. I like that she’s explicitly choosing her exit, not going quietly along. (No, I don’t think it’s being telegraphed: I think plenty of audiences don’t understand that Blanche has an option aside from passivity and surrender.) And I don’t think she’s insane, either; I think she’s exhausted and broken and finally, finally done with pretending that the airs and graces matter. That’s why I thought it was amazing that she goes out dressed as she does; some people have talked about that costuming/staging choice being completely wackdoodle, but I loved it.

Bob: A vendor!?! Very creative. Let her nap in the wings. And yes, I thought the ending with Blanche’s anaconda grip on the doctor’s arm, followed by a letting go and drifting away, was over the top. I mean, the production’s hardly been realistic throughout (that record player they keep playing on the bed would need a gyroscope to keep from skipping as they bounce around on the mattress) but literal etherealness seemed a bit much. I wasn’t moved by it, and I’ve been moved in the past – both relatively recently (in Arena’s behind-the-iron-curtain staging) and in the nearly prehistoric era (to play the age card since you played the geographic one). When Lois Nettleton played the KenCen, just a week after closing a 1973 revival on Broadway, the whole audience was sobbing at the curtain. I barely heard sniffles at this one.

Trey: Well, at least there was the one guy sniffling. I suppose I’ll be a good Southern boy and defer to your advanced age, but I gotta say I never thought I’d be trying to convince you that the Post and I got closer to the mark than you and The Washington Times.

Bob: Ooooh, seriously below the belt. And me, sweetly depending on the kindness of friends, too. Ah well. Someday we must chat about Patrick Stewart’s take on the last scene in Othello.