REVIEW: A Streetcar Named Desire and the End of The Bakehouse Theatre

Bakehouse Theatre, Fri 29 Apr, 2022.

A Streetcar Named Desire had a huge impact when first performed in the late 1940s due to its no-holds barred revelation of sexual mores of the time and American society’s treatment of women. The sexual undercurrents running through the play are pretty lame and inoffensive by contemporary standards, but sadly the issue of domestic violence against women is just as prevalent as it was back then. It was shocking then and it is shocking now – some men continue to parade around as the king of their households and use the threat of potential or actual violence to get their way.

According to Stanley, he and Stella were quite happy until her sister Blanche arrived and started rocking the boat with her judgemental ways and fake upper class pretensions. Blanche considers Stanley to be sub-human and implores her sister to leave him. Stanley does a little digging into Blanche’s sordid past and decides he can indeed be sub-human with her and take her whenever he wants. Her looser moral code in relations with men means she forfeits all rights to personal safety if men like Stanley decide to have his way with her.

This was a wonderful choice as the Bakehouse Theatre’s swansong. It has reliably maintained a high level of quality theatre for decades and sadly concludes on this very high note. The cast was uniformly exceptional, but one must give special credit for Melanie Munt’s performance as Blanche. It’s a demanding role that requires dignity and madness, superiority and frailty, feigned upper class elegance and down-in the gutter trash talking and she does them all with total conviction. Paul Westbrooks’ Al Pacino-type looks aids his swagger and boorish male bravado as he struts around the house showing off his physique, while occasionally allowing a softer side to embrace his Stella. But he’s a ticking time bomb whose masculinity should never be challenged. Marc Clement as Mitch represents a softer more sentient side of men and is charmingly played but he, too, quickly reverts back to the male stereotype when confronted with the truth about Blanche.

An ironic and fitting cameo has our Bakehouse hosts join the final scene to take Blanche away to some dreadful place where she and her kind will be hidden from society.

This was a great final act from The Bakehouse – all class to the end. Thank you, Bakehouse Theatre, for providing hundreds of hours of wonderful entertainment and offering thousands of Adelaide people the joy of live theatre from both sides of the curtain. You’ll be sadly missed. Vale old friend.

(This review also published on The Clothesline.)

The Ajoona Guest House - Review

 

Bakehouse Theatre, Wed  1 Dec

Courtesy of some well-deserved grants and funded residencies Stephen House set himself the exciting and daunting task of writing a performance monologue for each of three different cities. He has completed and performed the works on life in Dublin and Paris, and now unveils the final part of the trilogy – the Ajoona Guest House. Set in a dingier part of Delhi, the tale has House sharing memories of a long association with the guesthouse – “a dump with oodles of charm” – and India.

The Ajoona Guest House is something of a refuge for those Westerners who were smitten and subsequently trapped in a strange world of mysticism, drugs, and ultimately desperation. House introduces us to some of the desperados who will never check out, and shares the unlikely joy he finds in the company of a neighbourhood child beggar.

Often bleak, even harrowing, the tale is a sad one but it’s the kind of sadness that accompanies an understanding of what life is truly like. Life may be full of broken souls but even they have created moments of great joy and beauty. The trick is to realise that the wheel turns, that joy and pleasure are just as ephemeral as pain and suffering, that nothing is forever, and you can only hope that if you ever reach this point of understanding you are still sufficiently whole to appreciate the past and present with gratitude, and have enough strength left to pull yourself away from the darkness.

It has been said before but Stephen House is a wonderful story teller. The Ajoona Guest House is perfectly paced. His economy with words, obviously well-honed by the poet side of his creative self, is very easy to listen to, and gradually draws you into an intriguing tale that soon has you experiencing something else below the narrative; that sensation of being there, in the story, and wondering what you would do? How would you feel?

Beautifully presented on an almost bare stage with few props, The Ajoona Guesthouse is both simple and profound, entertaining and instructive. Bravo Stephen House.

(This review also published on The Clothesline.)