Brando is not here (and it's not needed)

And suddenly, the sweaty theater of Tennessee Williams arrived in the last days of summer in Malaga. And there to welcome it was Antonio Banderas, sitting in the fourth row of his theater, an actor who owes everything to cinema and gives everything to theater. A perfect metaphor for 'A Streetcar Named Desire,' which opened the season yesterday at the Teatro del Soho Caixabank: although its theatricality sticks to the body like the haze, it is impossible to imagine it without the black and white of Elia Kazan's 1951 film or without Marlon Brando desperately calling for Stella.

We are talking about a play that probably reached its zenith on the stages right at its Broadway premiere in 1947, also under the Kazan-Brando team, so staging it is a high-risk exercise. In this production, which premiered at the Teatro Español in Madrid last July 12, David Serrano acts as director and adapter with the healthy intention of distancing from the popular canon and trying to make the story his own, which I appreciate since, for more of the same, I would go to the original.

Faced with characters doomed to love, desire, and hatred, Serrano chooses the tram of lyricism. He prefers to move rather than to shock. Hence the jazzy composition by Luis Miguel Cobo, which accompanies well but emphasizes too much. Also, the scenography by Ricardo Sánchez Cuerda, which succeeds symbolically, with train tracks crushing the house and curtains as transparent and volatile as the inhabitants of that New Orleans apartment. There is also something poetic about the characters entering and exiting through the auditorium, as a nod to the true origin of this story. But above all, Serrano reverses the magnetic poles of the conflict, giving total prominence not to brutality, to heterosexual male desire, but to female psychology, mental health, and the right to be loved. Nathalie Poza takes on the challenge as an omnipresent and epileptically in love Blanche Dubois.

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Poza's demanding performance was rewarded with a standing ovation from the audience, although it seemed to me that she was working in a very different code from the others. "I'm not interested in realism," says Blanche, and she shows it even when vomiting. Too much dramatism, in my opinion, which grates when you contrast it for example with Jorge Usón, who perfectly portrays Harold Mitchell's withdrawal, or Carmen Barrantes as Eunice. María Vázquez, as Stella, also achieves verisimilitude without renouncing the theatrical. Indeed, all together, they function like clockwork.

And Brando? It must be said, and it is the great success of this staging, that this time the streetcar does not wait for him, beyond the nostalgia of the tank top. Pablo Derqui is a more shouty Stanley Kowalski, but very measured, who does not compete with Poza, rather serves as a perfect counterpoint without the need for great violence. He convinced me, although I suppose for some Kowalski will always be Brando just as Banderas is the alter ego of Zorro. Wonderful consequences that cinema provokes in us. For everyone else, you can hop on 'A Streetcar Named Desire' until September 20th.