I was lucky to have a coworker who got an email offering tickets to the benefit on Thursday night 12/3. I would say to ANYONE that this is a NO Brainer and that if you can get a ticket, do whatever you can to secure your seat. We were in the gallery and I was blown away. If it felt like it did where we were, I can only imagine what it was like in the orchestra. I think Brantley said that Liv took the piece and tried to do it as if it hadn't been done before and it shows. There was laughter in places where there had not been laughter before, and some things that happen during act 3 were played much differently then I had seen before. I have seen it in 3 acts with brief intermission between each act, but they have merged it into 2 halves with only 1 intermission.
Cate has really done HER OWN Blanche and she is able to be fragile one moment and totally bombastic in the next.
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Spoiler alert (well sort of)
I have remembered the climax of the whole piece pretty much being when Stanley takes her and says that they've had their date from the beginning. Here, the climax is when Blanche is taken away. It was so powerful that intense that I felt myself short of breath and starting to tear up.
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Stella and Stanley were superb as well. Joel Edgerton was very primitive and overtly sexual and masculine. He had a laugh that was almost like an audible sort of master gesture. It was sort of creepy. At the end there were at least 4 curtain calls, and immediate standing ovation, which were well deserved.
My previous pinnacle experience of this play had been Alec Baldwin and Jessica Lange in 1992. This production now stands at the top in my opinion.
"The price of love is loss, but still we pay; We love anyway."
