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A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams, Anne-Marie Duff (Read by), Pippa Bennett-Warner (Read by), Matthew Needham (Read by), John Heffernan (Read by), David Sturzaker (Read by), Sarah Ridgeway (Read by), John Dougall (Read by), Leila Arias (Read by), Tom Forrister (Read by), Georgie Glenn (Read by)

A Streetcar Named Desire

A BBC Radio full-cast dramatisation

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Summary

Anne-Marie Duff stars as Blanche DuBois in BBC Radio 3’s landmark production of Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece

Tennessee Williams's iconic play tells the story of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski.

Blanche DuBois arrives unexpectedly on the doorstep of her sister Stella and her explosive brother-in-law Stanley. Over the course of one hot and steamy New Orleans summer, Blanche's fragile façade slowly crumbles, wreaking havoc on Stella and Stanley's already turbulent relationship…

Embodying the turmoil and drama of a changing nation, A Streetcar Named Desire strips Williams's tortured characters of their illusions, leaving a wake of destruction in their path.

Tennessee Williams's 1947 drama is one of the most loved and well-known stage plays of the 20th century. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award in 1948, and the 1951 film adaptation picked up four Oscars. In this compelling radio dramatisation, Blanche is played by Olivier Award-winning actress Anne-Marie Duff, with a stellar cast including Matthew Needham as Stanley and Pippa Bennett-Warner as Stella.

Cast:
Blanche: Anne-Marie Duff
Stella: Pippa Bennett-Warner
Stanley: Matthew Needham
Mitch: John Heffernan
Steve: David Sturzaker
Eunice: Sarah Ridgeway
Pablo: John Dougal
Mexican Woman: Leila Arias
Collector: Tom Forrister
Nurse: Georgie Glen

Dramatised by Sarah Churchwell
Produced and directed by Sasha Yevtushenko

Duration: 2 hours approx.

About the author

Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams was born in 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi, where his grandfather was the episcopal clergyman. When his father, a travelling salesman, moved with his family to St Louis some years later, both he and his sister found it impossible to settle down to city life. He entered college during the Depression and left after a couple of years to take a clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there for two years, spending the evenings writing. He entered the University of Iowa in 1938 and completed his course, at the same time holding a large number of part-time jobs of great diversity. He received a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1940 for his play Battle of Angels, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and 1955. Among his many other plays Penguin have published The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real(1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Orpheus Descending (1957), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), Period of Adjustment (1960), The Night of the Iguana (1961), The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963; revised 1964) and Small Craft Warnings (1972). He died in 1983.
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