Stanley (2006)
Created by Lisa and Todd D’Amour
Directed by Lisa D’Amour
HERE Arts Center
145 6th Avenue
212-352-3101

Review by Aaron Riccio

Stanley (2006), arguably the most accomplished theatrical event of the Off-Broadway season, begins by revisiting the seminal Stanley Kowalski (by way of Brando), and ends with a man drowning under the weight of a life wrecked beyond repair. This one-man show, conceived by the D’Amour siblings Lisa (writer/director) and Todd (actor), is a highly physical, often frantic story, which focuses on a man who believes he's Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire, and as such roams the streets of modern-day America in search of Blanche Dubois.

Through the fancy multimedia setup — camera operator, Tara Webb, is a silent but critical part of the show — and Todd’s vocal control and physical prowess, Stanley (2006) is a nonstop thrill-ride on one man’s tragic emotional rollercoaster. The audience is not granted the security of darkened lights, and with Todd so comfortably uncomfortable in his own skin, the show is a chilling reminder that theater is, in fact, a live event. Less chilling is the reminder of how wildly ambitious and successfully experimental a show can be. Stanley (2006) is filmed anew every night. The filmmaking is so deliberately choreographed that it provides a brace for the action, not an interruption or a distraction--. It’s not just Todd who is projected back on the screen — there are also visual cues, which are spliced directly into the real-time footage. This opens up whole new territories for surrealism, montage, and metaphor. The camera also captures the audience, as well as the broken pieces of a shattered life that surround the stage and double as boundaries for this wide-open, ground-level performance.

These dramatic flourishes are justifiable interpretations — a technicolor dreamcoat to mask the character's loneliness. The script devotes a lot of time to these colorful tangents, but they are threaded together by Todd’s amazing self-control (or ability to show a lack thereof). Thanks to the camera, you can see the shift in his eyes with superb detail. Angry one minute, hushed the next, Todd follows the stream-of-consciousness narrative as if it were completely natural. If Stanley (2006) isn’t a tour-de-force, I don’t know what is.