STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring?- Page 4
STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring?
Joined: 12/31/69
#75STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 6/17/11 at 3:16pm
"The last production of Streetcar that I saw was also muli-racial. It was an interesting experiment. But if you are keeping the play within the genre of realism, you need to stick with traditional casting. "
When was it kept within the genre of realism? Certainly not in Kazan's version (a man who worked in realism quite a lot otherwise).
#76STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/5/11 at 1:02pm
Blair Underwood tweeted this earlier today
"Breaking news: Nicole Ari Parker, who is a great actress, just joined the cast of "Streetcar Named Desire.""
http://blackstarnews.com/news/135/ARTICLE/7565/2011-08-05.html
http://twitter.com/BlairUnderwood/status/99513729288384512
#77STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/5/11 at 1:05pm
Parker's husband, Boris Kodjoe, replaced Terence Howard in Boyett's production of CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, so perhaps he has a relationship with the family. Personally, I wouldn't want to make my stage debut in one of the most iconic roles in the American canon, but more power to her.
I was really hoping for Sanaa Lathan, though.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#78STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/5/11 at 2:58pm
Anika as Blanche?
What's next? Abigail Breslin as Berthe in Pippin?
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#79STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/5/11 at 3:02pm
If I can't have Blanchett in Ullman's fantastic production, I'll take Underwood on one condition.
CAST LYNN WHITFIELD AS BLANCHE!!!!
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#80STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/5/11 at 3:05pm
"the genre of realism"????
Honey, "I don't want realism, I want magic!"
#81STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/5/11 at 6:15pm
Lynn Whitfield is nearing sixty, Henrik. A fifty year old Stanley and sixty year old Blanche would certainly make for a production interesting for reasons other than color blind casting. 
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
RippedMan
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/14/05
#82STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/5/11 at 7:38pmWhy does it need to be an all-anything production? Let's just get a good cast going.
#83STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/5/11 at 7:42pm...because the folks producing it want it to be?
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
#84STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/5/11 at 10:15pm
I was really hoping for someone like Viola Davis or yes, even Anika Noni Rose (who was so brilliant in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF). Not particularly exciting about this casting.
So I guess this counts as another project that Rose was attached to that she didn't go through with, wonder if she's gonna come back to the stage in something, anything!
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
#85STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/5/11 at 10:17pmRose was never attached. Underwood made an off-hand comment that he wanted Sanaa Lathan to play Blanche and Rose to play Stella, but that was it. She was never seen for the role, and never agreed to play any role. Producers who touted her name were engaging in some wishful thinking.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Updated On: 8/5/11 at 10:17 PM
#86STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/5/11 at 10:21pmThanks for clarifying, AC, I was going off of Somethingwicked's post. I still want to see her back on stage, and I still think Davis would have been ideal casting, we'll see how Parker turns out, I haven't really seen her in anything.
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
#87STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/5/11 at 10:27pm
Anika may have been offered the role without an audition--it's very possible, considering that she was Maggie for the same producers--but she never accepted and was never officially or unofficially attached.
Viola would be great. Sanaa was the person I had envisioned from the beginning, and I'd still love to see her do it at some point. I'm not really familiar with Parker, but it seems like she has little-to-no stage experience. It's pretty ballsy to make your stage debut as Blanche DuBois. I wish her well.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#88STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/6/11 at 12:01am
I feel like I'm in a time warp. I had no idea Anika was 39 years old. I thought she was in her early-mid 20s.
theatreguy
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/31/03
#89STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/6/11 at 12:07amYou were probably confused by the fact that she won a Tony for playing a 16-year-old when she was 32. She's always looked young.
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#90STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/6/11 at 10:17amI also thought Lynn Whitfield was younger. Although she looks gorgeous as always and with Underwood's Stanley, she doesn't seem too old.
#91STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/6/11 at 10:56am
AC126748, Anika was attached to this production. As I said, it was being touted as a vehicle for her and Blair Underwood when the producing team was raising money for it last year.
Once the funding came into place and the actual dates became apparent, film and television commitments prevented her from remaining involved, as has happened with several of the stage projects she's been attached to over the last few years.
Tonya Pinkins: Then we had a "Lot's Wife" last June that was my personal favorite. I'm still trying to get them to let me sing it at some performance where we get to sing an excerpt that's gone.
Tony Kushner: You can sing it at my funeral.
Updated On: 8/6/11 at 10:56 AM
Tony Kushner: You can sing it at my funeral.
#92STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/6/11 at 11:07am
Interesting. A friend of mine was working with Anika recently and asked her if she was planning to do the production. She said, in no uncertain terms, that she wasn't and hadn't been involved. I was just reporting what I was told.
If Anika was attached to play Blanche at one point, it's intriguing then that Underwood would state in an interview that he wanted her to be his Stella.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Updated On: 8/6/11 at 11:07 AM
#93STREETCAR Returning to Broadway in Spring with Underwood?
Posted: 8/6/11 at 11:26am
I think having older actors play those roles works better today, as nowadays we don't look at a 30 year old woman as being past her prime and not marriageable. And somehow the idea of Blanche having gone over the edge mentally makes mores sense in an older, rather than younger woman.
I don't know why some people think Blair Underwood isn't "masculine" enough to play Stanley. Just because the man is well-groomed and has played slick roles, such as on L.A. Law, doesn't mean he can't play a working class man.
Although I like Anika, I wasn't thrilled with her Maggie the Cat, and see her more as Stella than Blanche.
While it would probably work better if Stanley, Blanche and Stella are all black, I don't see why some of the other characters couldn't be of other ethnicities. Isn't one of the poker players named Pablo? The neighbor woman who brings the grapes from the French Market? Maybe even Mitch, although I'd like to see a black Mitch.
I would have no problem with a black Stanley being called a "Pollack." Marlon Brando was not Polish and Jessica Tandy and Vivian Leigh were not Southern.
Actually, the Streetcar I'd really like to see is the one that appears in Almodovar's All About My Mother--with the characters Huma Rojo, Manuela and Mario.
Coach Bob knew it all along: you've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. You have to keep passing the open windows. (John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire)
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