Adequate Cast Returns Prize, Seamy 'Streetcar Named Desire' to Hanna

BY W. WARD MARSH

HE SECOND VISIT of Tennessee Williams' "A Street-

T

car Named Desire" to the Hanna Theater quite serves to point up and even stress the seamier side of a vivid. shocking, seamy drama.

The intent of the author to shock and to punch hard after each dramatic sock is now more apparent than it was during the play's initial visit. !

It is a little late to attempt to! muster much adverse criticism: since the play comes to town ringed with laurels and no less! than three major awards—the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Critics Award and the Donaldson Award.

If this means greatness. then make the most of it when you visit the play.

THINGS

BUT NOW THE which the author might have suggested and the frank and raw speeches he might better have left unsaid crowd in and shock and sicken.

Its base people seem little baser. Sex was always more than a physical urge in it; it is now a possessive rage, and the roughness within the play is now a good deal rougher than it was at first viewing.

SUCH EXPOSURE is not due to a weaker cast, although no one may claim that it quite matches the original or for that matter that it is in the group with Uta Hagen. Anthony Quinn and Russell Hardie.

This cast is adequate.

It seemed to me that it was uneasy and restless at the outset. sure of line but unsure of characterization. As the drama advanced it did for the most part find the sting and the po...er of play.

As you know this is not a pretty play. It is not only an unhappy one, but it is a deliberate shocker and its deliberations are now too apparent.

But it does still have that rare sensitive quality about it, and for the most part it possesses tremendous power. As if that were not enough. the author seems desirous of cinching his hold with frankness and occasionally with offensive rawness.

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IT IS SET in the South and is of a school teacher who goes to visit her sister in New Orleans.

Her sex life had become so twisted after she had known a homosexual, who shot himself. that she has degenrated into a prostitute now quite unable to face reality.

When the affairs in her sister's two-room flat become sufficiently "real." she turns to her only re-, course-retreat into her unreal world-and does of course have to be. as they say, put away. Her brutish brother-in-law and: the attraction he has for her, her one near seduction of a boy. her unhappy love affair with a new: fellow, all conspire against her and in the end, she takes the easiest way out-the emotional crack-

up, or as Williams would have it. goes nuts.

LOUISE PLATT who has had: considerable stage and screen experience is Williams' hapless heroine. Once the play begins to tighten around her. she gives a good performance. I think, however, she misses some of the nerv ousness, intensity, the frayed emotions of the heroine. but certainly her Blanche becomes a pitiable creature before the final curtain.

Philip Kenneally not only looks like a football player but he has ¡been one-with Notre Dame. And, he handles himself with the grace of a fighter-because he was once a Golden Glover. He does Kowalski with hardness and a fierceness which admits little shading. It is a good enough version for this production and it serves to intensify the physical magnetism he not only has for his wife buti for his degenerate sister-in-law.

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Beyond the physical attributes for the role. Ellen Davey has little to offer as his wife. Harry Kersey creates the hero's friend, and his shyness and awkward moves are fitting and well timed, adding to his sympathetic qualities which are heightened of course when he discovers that his love for the her-! oine has been pretty sadiy mis· placed.

Support is good. The setting is quite the same as before.

L. A. SHIPPING TIED UP

Tugboat Crewmen on Strike: Three Unions Are Involved LOS ANGELES. Jan. 1—P A strike of tugboat crewmen today tied up shipping in the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor. Virtually all big shipping-freighters, liners, etc.-will be snarled: until the wage dispute is settled.

Issues of the strike were not disclosed as union

spokesmen:

were not available. Company spokesmen said an offered cost of living increase was rejected by: the three unions involved and that the crewmen wanted a 30% wage increase. This, the company spokesmen said, would have meant a $50 an hour increase in towing:

rates.