“It feels like a celebration for this cast,” Mescal said at the party, noting that this was the fourth opening night they’d had between the Streetcar runs here and those in London, with time in between to come back and consider the play anew. “You don’t normally get to put something down for 15 months and then pick it back up again. But I think the audiences are benefiting from the fact that this company of actors have worked incredibly hard on those characters, and I think this iteration of the show is the best that we’ve done.”
Patsy Ferran, who plays the fragile Southern belle Blanche DuBois, has been basking in the opportunity to perform in New York. “This is the best city in the world—full stop,” the actor said, adding, “As I walk around Brooklyn, I’m fantasizing about where I would live, and I love the people here as well. It’s great.” Anjana Vasan, who plays Blanche’s sister, Stella, is also loving her time in the play’s home borough. “I spend my days walking for hours and then I go to the theater,” she shared. “I’ve been to bakeries and cafés. I’ve not even left Brooklyn yet to see Manhattan because I’m having so much fun.”
Doing the show together over several runs has bonded the company, Vasan noted. “We warm up together. And even during the show, we find each other in the interval. We go into each other’s [dressing] rooms, we’re always checking in on each other. We’re kind of obsessed with each other.”
The play unfolds on a stripped-down stage, with a raised platform at the center that feels reminiscent of a boxing ring in which the physical and emotional blows of the story are thrown. “We liked the idea of it being almost this island that [Blanche] is kind of stranded on,” noted Frecknall, who also serves as director on the currently running Broadway revival of Cabaret. “She arrives into an arena that she’s not familiar with, and all the other characters are of that world—and ultimately that world is going to destroy her. So I loved having a central space where the play is told. Also, it’s quite stripped down. It’s almost like a rehearsal room. What’s real and what’s illusion, we play with that as well. It’s become very charged, that central space.”
