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The short film by Gillian Anderson was a lovely little gem showing Blanche’s last few days in her apartment. The completely static camera allowed us to feel we were both sharing and distantly observing her experiences and the use of sound - from outside and in her mind - was very well and thoughtfully done, tying in well with the play with both music and voices.
The slow transitions between each scene (each one a day) effectively conveyed Blanche’s disorientation and the start of her separation form reality
There was a good dramatic structure as the main event was the visit of a policeman - a kind and gentle character - advising her to leave town in the light of her affair with the boy at school.
Excellent idea.
I have already seen the NT Live relay in an earlier iteration actually in a theatre…
Well, a second viewing and it was just as powerfully marvellous as the first time - and I noticed a few more details as well - as you do. the viewing confirmed that this gave one the best seats possible as one may well have missed certain elements if actually sitting in the theatre - even if the set did revolve a number of times, as is necessary for a production totally in the round.
The soundtrack was excellent being both poignant and appropriate. And in the play as a whole the intelligently effective degree to which Williams used rhetoric in depicting Blanche came across particularly powerfully - and using subtitles made one more aware of linguistic subtleties that mere hearing may have missed. Shown through the rhetoric, Blanches self-pitying and self-dramatising elements are clearly there from the start. But I was also more aware of how much humour there is in the play.
Anderson was stunning as Blanche and her final total collapse was spectacular in evert sense of the word - but she was remarkably ruthless in the way she tried to manipulate Mitch…
So a triumph that it was wonderful to see again.