The Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire, is being revived on Broadway.  The 65-year-old play is being produced for the first time on Broadway with an all non-white main cast.  Blair Underwood and Nicole Ari Parker star as Stanley and Blanche.  The play also co-stars Daphne Rubin-Vega and Wood Harris.

 

The production’s creative team was granted permission from the Williams estate to drop the last name of Kowalski, so that Stanley’s heritage is now African-American rather than Polish.

On the colorblind casting, Underwood tells EW: “Tennessee Williams was very connected to the racial diversity of the French Quarter. It’s even in the opening of the script, ‘Two women, one white and one colored, are taking the air on the steps of the building… for New Orleans is a cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of the races in the old part of town.’ Williams lived there and understood it.”

 

The revival opened Sunday, April 22, at the Broadhurst Theatre and is scheduled to play a limited run through July 22.

 

See clip below…

 

Pic Source