Unexpectedly, a spring theater festival is upon us. On Thursday, Durango High School Thespian Troupe 1096 opened “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Tonight (Friday), it runs directly opposite “The Secret Garden,” Merely Players’ big musical at the Durango Arts Center. The company couldn’t avoid the conflict, having to fit into the DAC’s tight rental schedule. Both productions will run evenings for two weekends. The musical has three matinees.
“A Streetcar Named Desire,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama written by Tennessee Williams, premiered on Broadway in 1947 and was made into a film in 1951. Today, the play is performed all over the world, most recently in a Broadway and London revival starring Gillian Anderson and Ben Foster.
“The setting is very specific,” Director Ben Mattson said in an interview last week. “It’s 1947 in the French Quarter of New Orleans. We have tried to use real set pieces and props – from a stove to the flooring, to a metal spiral staircase. Our goal is to balance realism with expressionism to create a beautifully fragile, cramped and desperate world.”
Synopsis: After losing her teaching job and her ancestral home, Blanche DuBois arrives at the city apartment of her sister, Stella, and husband, Stanley Kowalski. Blanche is desperate and in need of a safe haven. Stanley resents Blanche and doubts her version of what happened to the family estate
Mattson has double-cast the four principal roles. On alternate nights, you can see either Brooke Mazur or Hope Frihauf as Blanche; Sierra Kelly or Molly Christensen as Stella; Curtis Salinger or Shane Minerich as Stanley; and Chance Guffey or Devin Daley as Mitch. Other roles will be performed each night by Tori Byam, Parker Gaughan, Max Sinberg, Tiffany Harris and Nathan Brinkley.
To say mounting a high school production of “Streetcar” is a challenge is an understatement. But the choice was made by the students, Mattson said.
“Many of the students read ‘Streetcar’ in language arts classes,” Sierra Kelly said last week. “There seemed to be a collective desire to do the show. Students wanted a challenge and a chance to look far beyond the text into themselves and their own experiences.”
“The Secret Garden” is a contemporary musical based on the 1911 novel for children by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It, too, is a story of a family member who turns up on the doorstep of a relative.
After a cholera epidemic in India that took the lives of her parents, 10-year-old Mary Lennox (Ellie Clark) has been sent to live with her widowed English uncle and his invalid son. There is a forbidden garden on the Yorkshire estate, and it figures prominently in this tale of renewal – for Mary and for others surrounding her.
In 1991, the musical was adapted from the popular American novel by playwright Marsha Norman and composer Lucy Simon. The musical won the Tony for best musical
Like “Streetcar,” “Garden” has been performed all over the world. Last November, it had a lavish production in Washington, D.C. The role of Martha was played by Equity Actress Daisy Eagan. In a nice twist of fortune, she won the Tony Award for her Mary Lennox in 1991. At the time, Eagan was the youngest actress to win a Tony for a leading role.
“Ellie Clark is our Mary Lennox,” Wood-Patterson said in a telephone interview last weekend. “She’s in seventh grade and has been with us for years. The role is huge, and I would never give a part this big to someone I didn’t know. Ellie is wonderful – adorable as Mary Lennox.”
The story unfolds in present time with flashbacks and dream sequences. “A Secret Garden” adds to the great musical tradition centered on orphans: “Oliver” and “Annie,” to name only two.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theater Critics Association.
If you go
What: Durango High School Thespian Troupe 1096 presents “A Streetcar Named Desire,” a drama by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Benjamin Mattson.
When: 7 p.m. May 4-6, 11-13.
Where: Durango High School theater.
Tickets: $10
More information: For more information and to buy tickets, call 259-1630, ext. 2141.
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What: Merely Players presents “The Secret Garden,” a musical by Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Directed by Mona Wood-Patterson.
When: 7 p.m. May 5, 6, 11, 12 and 13 and 1 p.m. May 6, 13 and 14.
Where: Durango Arts Center, 802 East Second Ave.
Tickets: All tickets $25.
More information: Call 247-7657 or visit www.durangoconcerts.com.
