Review: Sensing Blanche
Last Thursday, for the first time since 2019, I stepped once more into a theatre space: James Arnott Theatre at the University of Glasgow. The School of Culture & Creative Arts is a department I know well from my time studying an MLitt there.
On this occasion, I was there to see Nicole Kovacs’ performance on the life of Blanche DuBois - the doomed character from Tennesee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Kovacs research area is The Phenomenal Moment - a study in the phenomenological interaction between actor, audience imagination, and space. During the 35 minute, one-person show, Kovacs inhabited the spirit of DuBois to the extent that you could see the whole cast beside her. Spotlights threw up adjacent areas where Stanley would stand and during those moments the audience could almost smell the menacing beads of sweat forming on his non-existent forehead. We sense the acute danger DuBois is in: the shadows throwing her isolation into stark relief as her pleading hand reaches tentatively into the light to placate a character she knows only too well will do her harm. And yet, like a moth to a flame, she persists. In the world of structural engineering, there is a concept known as misfit strain where the natural shape of an object and the natural shape of the hole it occupies are compared. Kovacs’ electric performance makes evident Dubois’ misfit through the absence of family and comforting friends. The Meisner technique is used to place the audience in the moment alongside the performer - and now and then is extended into a tableau where DuBois’ torture is put on display much as an artefact in a museum. We taste her fear with increasing intensity. The claustrophobic soundscape comprises snippets of the play’s dialogue in reverb - a form of distanciation which seems to act as an echo of the visual aesthetic of absence. It is both discombobulating and menacing.
Kovacs is a phenomenal actor with a fine sense of dramaturgy and I very much look forward to whatever future work she produces.