Fast Car

Nuance and vulnerability sing in a visiting Tennessee Williams adaptation.

THERE ARE CERTAIN plays that, no matter the production, leap straight through your ears to your soul every time. Like listening to a Mozart aria, the experience is astonishing even if the performer isn't quite a match for the material. But how much more thrilling it is when the whole orchestra is poised to pump life into a deathless score. That's the case with Rebecca Frecknall's muscular revival of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, visiting BAM after an Olivier-showered London run. Paul Mescal, the bedroom-eyed star of Aftersun and the Gladiator sequel, might be a big part of the draw-his Stanley Kowalski is a performance to raise pulses-but he's far from throwing off the balance of the show.

Neither he nor elfin powder keg Patsy Ferran as Blanche DuBois subordinates their fellow actors. Frecknall has revivified Streetcar as a haunting ensemble piece with a devastating trio at its center.