A Streetcar Named Desire

"The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play."

‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of happiness.

Tennessee Williams was an American playwright and author of many stage classics.

After years of obscurity, he became suddenly famous with ‘The Glass Menagerie’, closely reflecting his own unhappy family background. This heralded a string of successes, including ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’, ‘Orpheus Descending’, and ‘Sweet Bird of Youth’. His later work attempted a new style that did not appeal to audiences, and alcohol and drug dependence further inhibited his creative output.

Williams adapted much of his best work for the cinema, and also wrote short stories, poetry, essays and a volume of memoirs. In 1979, four years before his death, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.