A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE at Backyard Renaissance

Backyard Renaissance’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” isn’t just a drama; it’s a ghost story. Director Rob Lutfy leans into the spectral energy of Tennessee Williams’ New Orleans, conjuring a version of the classic that feels both timeless and supernatural. With ghostly music, poetic visuals, and achingly poignant performances, this production transforms Blanche DuBois’ descent into madness into something mythic.

Jessica John stars as Blanche DuBois in Backyard Renaissance Theatre’s
“A Streetcar Named Desire.” Photo Credit: Daren Scott

When Blanche (Jessica John) arrives in Elysian Fields to stay with her sister Stella (Megan Carmitchel), the irony of the name is immediate. There’s nothing heavenly about the cramped apartment Stella shares with her volatile husband Stanley (Francis Gercke). The marriage is a cycle of explosive fights and passionate make-ups, equal parts toxic and magnetic. Blanche, clinging to the frayed remnants of Southern gentility, is horrified. But Stella, more wild child than debutante, defends both her sister and her husband with fierce loyalty. 

Jessica John delivers a powerful, emotionally layered performance as Blanche. Her voice, posture, and timing all evoke a woman barely holding herself together through manners and memory. Her chemistry with Carmitchel is a nuanced tightrope of tension and tenderness, shaped by the sisterhood of shared loss and diverging paths. Carmitchel’s Stella is grounded, impulsive, and torn between two people she loves. Both women embody different forms of survival, and both, in their ways, are being consumed by their choices.

Francis Gercke makes Stanley more calculating than feral; he isn’t just a brute, but a strategist, seeking to inflict pain in any way possible. He disarms with charm and strikes with precision, a predator who knows how to make people unravel. Meanwhile, MJ Sieber brings warmth and awkwardness to Mitch, whose gentle hope curdles into disillusionment and further heartbreak in the play’s final scenes. His tender rapport with Blanche offers the only genuine kindness she’s shown until even that slips away.

Photo Credit: Francis Gercke and Jessica John in Backyard Renaissance Theatre’s
“A Streetcar Named Desire.” Photo Credit: Daren Scott

But what makes this "Streetcar" unique is how it leans into the surreal. The haunting soundscape, designed by Evan Eason and Steven Leffue, blends sultry jazz, thunder, rumbling streetcars, and ghostly echoes. Faith Carrion’s haunting rendition of "La Llorona," a Mexican folk song about loss, guilt, and grief, parallels Blanche’s tragic arc. Just as La Llorona wanders the earth mourning her lost children, Blanche drifts through this play mourning a lost world, a lost love, a lost self; she is as much a specter as a survivor.

Set design by Yi-Chien Lee emphasizes the cramped, oppressive space where Blanche’s world collapses, while ghostly visions (including William Huffaker as her young husband) flicker through the atmosphere like ghosts that won’t stay buried. Fight choreography by George Ye is tight, brutal, and jarringly effective.

This production has a dreamlike timelessness, where the story flickers in and out of 1947 (the original setting) and modern day.  Blanche becomes a myth, a woman caught between past and present, reality and fantasy. 

In the end, Lutfy’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” doesn’t just tell us Blanche’s story. It haunts us with it. And like the best ghost stories, it lingers long after the final blackout.

How To Get Tickets

“A Streetcar Named Desire” by Backyard Renaissance runs at the 10th Avenue Arts Center through July 12th.  For ticket and show time information, go to www.backyardrenaissance.com