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Actors: Baldwin William,Berenger Tom,Landau Martin,Curtis Keene,Pryor Nicholas,Peck Tony,Turner Frantz,Kinder Dr. Melvyn,Romance,Thriller,

Slivers of truth
16.10.09
IN a mad dash from the airport, we have rushed to Sydney Theatre for a matinee, almost late thanks to daylight saving, and just made it, skidding into the crowded foyer with suitcases behind us. That’s how many of us turn up to things in our lives – rushing and dragging our own emotional baggage along, brain scrambled.

We’ve arrived still in superficial, pond-skimming mode, haven’t stopped to take a deep breath and duck-dived down to prepare for what’s below in the murky, stiller depths of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning A Streetcar Named Desire.

We’re still thinking: Come on, can Cate Blanchett really be as marvellous as everyone says?

Does that SK-II skincare she plugs work? And will Joel Edgerton have the menacing sexuality needed for the role of Stanley, made famous by Marlon Brando? More importantly, what’s he like with his shirt off?

The answers were yes, yes, yes and pretty damn fine. Edgerton’s obviously hit the gym.

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means seeing place and seated in the sell-out crowd, I edge forward to make sure I don’t miss a moment of Blanchett’s damaged southern belle Blanche DuBois unravelling on stage.

From her initial airs and graces to her final broken state, Blanchett is riveting. The thing about watching great actors is that you stop watching them act and start seeing and believing. It was the same with Robyn Nevin in The Year of Magical Thinking in Brisbane just a week before. This 90-minute play, precisely and poetically written by Joan Didion, is an exquisite sliver of truth and beauty.

Life is a strange and messy journey. Occasional exquisite slivers of beauty and truth break through. Savour them. But don’t get used to them. They will pass. They come to us unexpectedly.

Sometimes you find them in music, in books, in plays. Good theatre is a prism through which to see the world.

Like all good theatre, once you see it you can’t shake it. It soaks in. I now have two prisms in my hands, like fine-cut crystal whisky glasses – Streetcar and Magical Thinking. And it seems that in the days after seeing these, every encounter, every conversation can be seen more clearly through one of these.

We are still discussing Streetcar and life and loss and delusion and reality later in the underground Foveaux Bar in Surry Hills, a dark cool cave-like basement bar. I, showing great wisdom, maturity and restraint, have a series of French 75s, a mix of gin, lemon juice and champagne. The name, I read later, refers to the 75mm handgun used by the French army throughout World War I. I suspect it is because the next day you feel like someone’s shot you. Or you wouldn’t mind if they did. But on the night, all seems peachy and hours later we climb the stairs to the street and reality and hail a taxi.

Despite that French 75 fog, it becomes obvious our taxi driver has love, loss and life on his mind. Sydney is cold that night and he says he has just one measly blanket at his place.

The day before, his ex-wife gave him the last of his belongings from the family home in a fruit crate and he packed them in the car. Not wanting the car broken into, he asked her for something to throw over it. She brought out an old thin blanket.

"After 35 years of marriage and that’s all I’ve got against the cold."

"Not even a quilt," I say. You must have really pissed her off.

He says: "You know, we had 25 good years of marriage, 25. But we stayed married for 35 years. I’ve been alone for several months now. She thought I had girlfriends but I didn’t and here I am still by myself." Sure, he is bitter but not twisted. There is even a resigned humour to his story.

I turn the prism. I think of moths. Tennessee Williams first wanted to call Streetcar, The Moth, conjuring thoughts of moths beating their wings against a wall, becoming damaged.

So what’s life like now? I ask.

"Free. Good."

The taxi driver gets us to our hotel. The next morning, the French 75 lives up to its namesake but there’s a flight to catch. My Brisbane taxi crashes into another taxi on the way from the airport, which helps my head no end. But I get home and drive to the chemist to get drops for tired, what-were-you-thinking-last-night eyes.

The chemist takes one look, asks me what I’ve been doing. I tell him about Streetcar.

He says: "Tennessee Williams. You know they killed him," pointing to the eye drops in my hand.

"What?!"

Williams had a habit of taking the cap off his eye drops, holding it in his teeth, tilting his head back and putting drops in. But on February 26, 1983, he did that and it seems the cap slipped down his neck. An autopsy found that he choked on the cap and a high level of barbiturates and alcohol in his body had diminished his gag response.

"Eye drops can be fatal. We learnt that at uni," says the chemist. "Our lecturer was a big theatre-goer and he used that as an anecdote to teach students about cautioning customers on all the dangers of medicine. The story made me go to see Streetcar. My mother had mental problems and so did Williams’s family. He wrote about that so well I cried."

Who expects lifesaving advice, literary discussion and emotional disclosure at the chemist counter? I turn the prism again. An exquisite sliver of truth and beauty in unexpected places. I go home and put the eye drops in very carefully and lie down.

And another thing.

Cancel this arvo’s golf game. Put off the mowing. Uninvite the family for dinner. There are two performances left of The Year of Magical Thinking. Robyn Nevin, who led the Queensland Theatre Company between 1996 and 1999, portrays Joan Didion, a writer lost in grief. It is a mesmerising and nuanced performance. What a great day for Australian theatre when she returned to the stage. It finishes with today’s 2pm matinee and 7.30pm show at QPAC’s Cremorne Theatre.

IN a mad dash from the airport, we have rushed to Sydney Theatre for a matinee, almost late thanks to daylight saving, and just made it, skidding into the crowded foyer with suitcases behind us. That&squo;s how many of us turn up to things in our lives – rushing and dragging our own emotional baggage along, brain scrambled.

We&squo;ve arrived still in superficial, pond-skimming mode, haven&squo;t stopped to take a deep breath and duck-dived down to prepare for what&squo;s below in the murky, stiller depths of Tennessee Williams&squo; Pulitzer Prize-winning A Streetcar Named Desire.

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