2. In all previous productions of Streetcar I'm aware of, the action as a whole was treated as a quasi-Darwinian struggle for survival between two opposing natures, a quietly epic showdown between rough and crude Stanley and refined and delicate Blanche that ended in a sort of sexual death-clutch. This is the legacy of Marlon Brando, who twisted Tennessee Williams's intentions by stealing the limelight for Stanley when the play was conceived as a portrait of Blanche, an exploration of her uniquely fascinating and fantastic nature.Blanchett restores that original profile to the play, playing a character whose complexity transcends description as a polar opposite of anyone or anything. There is nothing weak or unduly subordinate about Joel Edgerton's Stanley, mind you. Edgerton gives a marvelous performance, but it's clear at all times that his character is an instrument of the killing environment, not a co-equal antagonist to Blanche. This is her story, just as exclusively as if Williams had written it as an Expressionist drama with only one real character.

Ullmann’s direction delivers so much pleasure that it’s a shame that, at the finale, she doesn’t deliver the play’s meaning. In her staging of the rape scene that drives Blanche over the edge, Blanche collapses on the bed, only to have her degradation prettified by an invented postcoital dumb show. When, some weeks later, the demented Blanche is taken to a sanitarium, she doesn’t, contrary to Williams’s stage directions, get herself up in the regalia of normalcy, a performance of dignity that, in other stagings, gives genuine pathos to her exit. Instead, still in her slip and bare feet, clutching the doctor with both hands, Blanche is led into the bright light of day like a loony Daisy Mae from “Li’l Abner” ’s Dogpatch. Ullmann’s reductive decisions build to vulgar sentimentality, with Blanche isolated in a spotlight and lost in her own internal music as the curtain falls. Although this doesn’t spoil the evening, it’s a woeful miscalculation. Williams’s play ends not with Blanche but with the Kowalskis’ sexual reconciliation. The final image—unseen on Ullmann’s stage—has, in a sort of Renaissance pictorial grouping, Stella holding her baby, while Stanley kneels at her feet. She sobs as he undoes the buttons of her blouse and murmurs, “Now, now, love.” Blanche has been sacrificed to the Kowalskis’ desire and collusion. The play ends with a line never heard in this production. “This game is seven-card stud,” one of Stanley’s poker-playing buddies says, dealing a new hand. The game of life, Williams is telling us, goes on at all costs.

The original plan in the mid-1950s was for Laughton and his wife, Lanchester, to perform the show, then titled "Happy Anniversary, 2116," as part of an evening of one-act musicals staged in London.

James Whale, who had directed Lanchester and Boris Karloff in the movie "The Bride of Frankenstein" (after making its precursor, "Frankenstein") and Laughton in " The Old Dark House," was going to stage the production. ( Ian McKellen portrayed the director in the 1998 film "Gods and Monsters.")

Veteran Tin Pan Alley songwriter Ray Henderson ("Bye, Bye Blackbird") was engaged to set Bradbury's lyrics to music.

But Whale's suicide in 1957 sidetracked those plans and Laughton's death in 1962 seemingly finished them.

Until, that is, Bradbury dusted the script off early this year as a potential project for his own stage troupe, Pandemonium Theatre Company, which last year offered a long-running, non-musical version of "Fahrenheit 451" at the Fremont Centre.

They both said they were pleased for Mr. Huff, whom Mr. DeFaria calls “the most down-to-earth guy you’ll ever meet,” and that neither held a grudge against their megastar substitutes. They don’t mince words, however, in discussing how they were replaced.

(...)

Mr. DeFaria said he and Mr. Steinmeyer were aware that the producers wanted to get huge movie stars into the roles: “They were very upfront about it. I guess I just didn’t think it was a real possibility.”

Neither actor saw the play in New York. They might have, they said, if someone had invited them or sent them tickets. Instead, “They offered us house seats,” Mr. Steinmeyer said. “For $120 apiece.”

I happen to have the annoying quality of being very faithful to an idea. I still believe that a company of resident actors working together on new plays and new interpretations of classics is an exciting way to go in theater, and one that grows the audience and grows the company. But it’s not the only way to go and it’s not the way the A.R.T. is going now. Maybe someday we’ll come back to it. But right now it’s very hard to find that repertory ideal being exercised in too many places in the United States. It’s just too expensive. But it’ll come back. If you don’t like something in this country, just wait. It’ll change.

Wertenbaker believes that the actors were not given a fair crack of the whip because many of the critics had spent the day being liberally wined and dined at the Evening Standard theatre awards – a four-hour affair at the Royal Opera House that involved a champagne reception followed by lunch and as much wine as they wanted to drink. She said some critics had had the grace to say they would come on a different night, but most came after the lunch.

Wertenbaker told the Guardian: "I've had bad press nights and bad reviews but I've never had the sense that the critics were too tired to engage. It is a complicated play, it's difficult, you have to pay attention to it.

"I just felt that the play didn't have a chance. The actors said they had a great night the previous evening and the atmosphere was very different. They did feel they were wading through something quite heavy. They weren't all drunk but it's hard to get through something like that [a long awards ceremony] without being tired. It was very unfortunate that our press night was after it."

Another good sign can be seen in the big red paper thermometer that hangs in the troupe’s Lexington Street offices, where it tracks ticket sales for Reagle’s annual holiday spectacular, “It’s Christmas Time,’’ which opens Friday in Waltham High School’s Robinson Theatre. The mercury is on the rise.

A push is on to fill every seat at all 10 shows - 10,820 tickets in all. Area businesses, including IKON Office Solutions, Johnson Compounding and Wellness Center, and Waltham Services Inc., are aiding the effort by offering discount tickets to employees. With more than a week to go before opening night, more than 7,000 tickets had been sold, and the goal was inching into reach.

There are those that will say that I'm taking a silly piece of theater, played for the laughs, too seriously.

Chris Jones, of the Chicago Tribune, wrote: "Despite all those portentous doctoral dissertations on the subversiveness of the Theatre of the Ridiculous, this is not dramatic profundity. Not any more. There is really one criteria upon which 'Irma Vep' now need be judged. Is it funny? Oh, yes. You will laugh your face off."

On the other hand, the origins of the play and the period in history that it came from are, I think, too important to simply dismiss. All those portentous doctoral dissertations, Chris? Gosh, and one would think that after eight years of a dumbed down government, theater critics would've kept a touch of intellectual integrity...

This only makes hapless Ed's review all the more ridiculous - he was actually talking to someone from Rebecca, not Macbeth; he'd wandered into the "Hitchcock" side of Sleep No More without knowing it (or perceiving it). In that a central concern of "hypertheatre" is mimicking the interpenetrations of "hypertext," this is rather a large critical gaffe.

Then again, none of the Boston critics pondering Sleep No More seems to have considered its hyper-textual aspects - although btw, Siegel may have missed a secondary piece of hyper-script in the performance he witnessed. While he was wondering about whether or not poor Poornima Kirby was going to take her clothes off, she was whispering to him a tale that sounds a lot like a scene from Büchner's Woyzeck. Not that Ed should have recognized that, after all he's only a professional drama critic . . .

It seemed the perfect way to draw in theatregoers: a sign outside Wyndham's containing a reviewer's quote, describing The Shawshank Redemption as "a superbly gripping, genuinely uplifting drama."

Unfortunately, the phrase was about the Hollywood film, not the West End stage production. And it turns out the reviewer didn't even like the play that much.

Westminster Trading Standards is now looking at whether Wyndham's, in Charing Cross Road, has broken consumer protection legislation by using a "misleading" quote.

William Hanney, who owns Theatre By the Sea in Rhode Island as well as the chain of 10 New England multiplexes known as Entertainment Cinemas, has reached a purchase agreement with Citizens Bank, which acquired the Beverly theater last month.

“This theater is literally ready to reopen,’’ said Hanney, 40, who lives in Brewster. “The phone lines are still there, the computers are still humming.’’

According to a witness, Hart, 45, best-known for playing Professor Quirrell in the Harry Potter films, "exploded with anger" during the curtain call of Speaking in Tongues at the Duke of York's theatre in the West End. The focus of his ire was Gerard Earley, a 38-year-old web developer from south London, whom Hart believed had been talking through his performance.

Exactly what happened is difficult to work out. Earley, who went to see the play with his girlfriend and denies disruptive behaviour, told the Daily Mail that "a wild-looking" Hart definitely jumped from the stage – but he wasn't quite sure if he had been physically attacked. "He lost it and lunged forward. I don't think he hit me," Earley said. "One of the members of staff grabbed him and stopped him attacking me."