Paul Mescal is ani­mat­ed by hatred in A Street­car Named Desire

The defin­i­tive Stan­ley Kowal­s­ki will always be Mar­lon Bran­do in Elia Kazan’s 1951 film. A not unre­lat­ed fact: this is the sex­i­est a man has ever looked in the his­to­ry of motion pic­ture arts. 23-year-old Bran­do is half-feline, half-bull and ful­ly enjoy­ing the peak of his phys­i­cal prowess. ​“He changed the con­cept of sex in Amer­i­ca. Before him no man was ever con­sid­ered erot­ic,” said author and intel­lec­tu­al Gore Vidal.

Brando’s injec­tion of adren­a­lised macho glee into Ten­nessee Williams’ haunt­ing­ly trag­ic play takes away none of the dra­ma as two char­ac­ters who should nev­er be brought togeth­er, Stan­ley and Blanche DuBois, are com­pelled to cohab­it in the same New Orleans hot­house. Bran­do is hav­ing such a ball and we the audi­ence (against all our noblest inten­tions) are hav­ing such a ball watch­ing him that Stanley’s vio­lent inten­tions towards the men­tal­ly frag­ile Blanche are not always front-and-cen­tre. We lose our­selves in the hyp­not­ic qual­i­ty of Bran­do in a fit­ted t‑shirt, arm mus­cles bulging, a boy­ish smile on his face as he does what­ev­er the hell he likes.

Paul Mescal is well aware that any­one who plays Stan­ley is shad­ow-box­ing with Bran­do, so it’s a bold swing at this blos­som­ing stage in his career to do so for a short run at the Almei­da The­atre. Tick­ets sold out at light­ning speed. I won­der what those who fell for his soul­ful por­traits of mas­culin­i­ty-in-cri­sis in Nor­mal Peo­ple and After­sun made of a per­for­mance ani­mat­ed by hatred. Where Bran­do sub­li­mat­ed this facet beneath play­ful charm, Mescal leans into it. Eyes glit­ter with ven­om, spit flies, face pinkens and neck ten­dons bulge.

In the hours after the play, if I had seen Mescal com­ing towards me, I would have turned tail and fled. Per­haps this is a fea­ture not a bug for a reluc­tant mil­len­ni­al heartthrob.

This aggres­sion starts out as a dis­qui­et­ing note with­in an atti­tude of bare­ly-con­cealed con­tempt. Mescal is aloof about his sex appeal, both as it strikes Blanche – when she arrives at the house of her estranged sis­ter Stel­la and her hus­band Stan­ley, all fraz­zled and thirsty with a suit­case of fad­ed gowns – and as it plays to an audi­ence pop­u­lat­ed by his fans. The Almei­da is a small venue that spe­cialis­es in extra inti­ma­cy between per­form­ers and audi­ences. Dur­ing last year’s run of Dad­dy, Jere­my O Harris’s play about sex­u­al patron­age in the LA art world, those in the first two rows were equipped with tow­els in antic­i­pa­tion of being splashed by the tit­u­lar dad­dy, Claes Bang as he frol­icked in the on-stage swim­ming pool. For Street­car, direc­tor Rebec­ca Freck­nell makes use of the nar­row walk­ways, hav­ing per­form­ers dash around so close that pant­i­ng can be heard. If Mescal was affect­ed by the col­lec­tive intake of breath that came when­ev­er he changed clothes on stage, he shut it down. Not a drop of ener­gy went towards indulging the erot­ic gaze; it was all focused on express­ing a destruc­tive­ness that only grew until it eclipsed the room and sent us off into the night, disturbed.

Freck­nell has adapt­ed the play with deft mod­ern touch­es to the stag­ing and total fideli­ty to Ten­nessee Williams’ script. She uses rain in the open­ing and clos­ing scenes (what is it with the Almei­da and water) and deploys the whole cast to impres­sion­is­ti­cal­ly show moments in Blanche’s past, under­lin­ing the amount of loss that she has suf­fered. The genius of Williams’ char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions is such that sub­tle shifts in empha­sis refresh well-trod roles. Is Blanche a delud­ed snob who seals her own fate by con­de­scend­ing to Stan­ley in his own home? Or is she a vic­tim of sex­ist atti­tudes that mean her unre­mark­able trans­gres­sions (being in her 30s, promis­cu­ity) are used to destroy her?

Olivi­er-award win­ning actress, Pat­sy Fer­ran, plays Blanche as qui­et­ly as it is pos­si­ble to play a char­ac­ter with such ornate flour­ish­es of elo­quence. In her hands, Blanche is a woman ahead of her time. A line of orig­i­nal dia­logue, excised from the Kazan film, has Blanche explain to her once-besot­ted, now-dis­il­lu­sioned para­mour, Mitch, that her sex­u­al habits grew as her mum lay dying because the oppo­site of death is desire. Her Blanche is, pre­dom­i­nant­ly, a fire­brand truth-teller who pre­tends to be a younger, dizzi­er ver­sion of her­self as a strat­e­gy to escape a real­i­ty in which she has no mon­ey, no home, no job and is hang­ing by a sliv­er to san­i­ty. If there is hope for Blanche, it lies in charm­ing her way into a less oppres­sive domes­tic scenario.

This mod­est ambi­tion is no Machi­avel­lian scheme, even if it is paint­ed as such by Stan­ley then Mitch. When I watch Romeo and Juli­et, I hope against hope that Juliet’s let­ter will reach Romeo in time; in Street­car I hope against hope that Blanche will elope with Mitch before all is lost, before that fate­ful, ter­ri­ble rape her­ald­ed by Stan­ley say­ing, ​“We’ve had this date with each oth­er since the beginning.”

Oppo­site the high­ly sym­pa­thet­ic Fer­ran, Mescal’s open cru­el­ty lands all the more painful­ly, like an ele­phant trap­ping an extreme­ly clever ger­bil by the tail. A taste of the vit­ri­ol that Stan­ley has for Blanche’s sex­u­al char­ac­ter bub­bles up dur­ing a dis­cus­sion about star signs. She reveals that her star-sign is Vir­go ​“the vir­gin”. ​“HAAA!” booms Mescal with furi­ous scorn.

The impact of his per­for­mance comes from the com­bi­na­tion of tech­ni­cal bril­liance with emo­tion­al cold­ness. He is loud, vital and fast, but he is not try­ing to build a heart­felt case for Stanley’s inse­cu­ri­ties as a work­ing class, sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion immi­grant, he does not want us to like Stan­ley, but – by god – he wants us to respect a death dri­ve that knows no rea­son­able bounds.

Sure, the script tells us that Stan­ley had to bat­tle Stella’s class reser­va­tions before she would love him and Blanche’s appear­ance threat­ens to restore that old painful dynam­ic. Nonethe­less, his hatred for Blanche is more encom­pass­ing than his love for Stel­la. Paul Mescal has giv­en us a vision of misog­y­ny that is force­ful­ly opaque. If Brando’s preda­tor of choice was a tiger cub, Mescal’s is a tiger shark.

A Street­car Named Desire runs until 4 Feb­ru­ary. All shows are cur­rent­ly sold out, how­ev­er the Almei­da The­atre explains two ways to try for returned tickets.