World class

A Streetcar Named Desire
Donmar

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Streetcar opens with a strange spectacle. Christopher Oram’s lovely — too lovely — design has the upper circle decked out in peeling ironwork which soars across the boards and modulates into a chic spiral staircase overlooking the Kowalski’s open-plan apartment. This Manhattan-loft gesture exposes the impossibility of making the Donmar’s airy spaces look like a cramped one-bedroom flat in the wife-beating district of New Orleans. The grime, the physical claustrophobia are missing from Rob Ashford’s production but these are the only failings in this fabulous, horrible, thrilling, galling, hair-pricklingly uncomfortable show.

As Stanley, Elliot Cowan emphasises the ape, the animal, the hyena let loose at Crufts, and he captures Stanley’s pent-up rage with horrifying and brutal clarity.