Debbie Yones is Blanche DuBois in 620’s ‘Streetcar’

The role of Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the most coveted among dramatic actresses.

First played by Jessica Tandy in a 1947 Broadway production, Blanche is a complex character. She’s a spoiled Southern belle who’s lost everything, including the family home, her bank account, her job and any fixed sense of identity. She retains, at first, her fierce pride and biting wit. She also drinks and lies.

Blanche leaves Mississippi for steamy New Orleans, to move into the tiny apartment her sister, Stella, shares with her crass, brutish husband Stanley.

And from there … things happen.

In the current Streetcar production at The Studio@620, Blanche is played by St. Petersburg stage stalwart Debbie Yones, who admits that Tandy, Vivien Leigh (from the 1951 movie version) and the others who assayed the character over the years were all tough acts to follow.

The answer: Make her your own.

“There’s the iconic nature of the role,” Yones says, “that puts it on a bucket list, but then there’s also the depth of the character, the layers, and the journey that she goes through, that make it a challenge: Am I able to step up to this challenge? And bring Debbie’s version of Blanche, as opposed to any of the more iconic versions of it?”

Blanche’s already fragile mental state is battered by Stanley, who repeatedly taunts, insults and taxes her in different ways. He’s as rough as she is willowy. A Streetcar Named Desire is highly sexualized, with a river of tension running just underneath the surface.

Yes, it’s a challenging role. Yones threw herself into it. “You tap into something that is completely different than the person that you are out in the world,” she says. “As an actor, you have to sometimes let go and let yourself 100 percent be in it. I hope that I pull that off.”

The show’s director is Erica Sutherlin, the artistic director of The Studio@620.

“One thing that Erica did that allowed us to explore is bringing the story forward into 1965. Where there are a lot of different factors, including interracial marriages coming forefront and into the news.” Marjorie Joseph (who plays Stella) is Black, while and Stanley (Max Carley) is white. Blanche’s would-be beau Mitch is played by Black actor Robert Richards Jr. (Yones is white).

Still, not a word of Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning dialogue has been changed.

“And also, second-wave feminism is right in that time period. And that affects how a woman sees herself in the world. And what role she has to have; how much choice really happens? Because I think when we have these waves of progress, sometimes we have to overshoot in order to find the right balance. And during that period of feminism, a woman couldn’t be weak.

“It generates even more conflict, because now you’re pushing against the traditional, and you’re pushing against the new wave, and ‘what if I don’t fit one of those two extremes?’”

A Streetcar Names Desire has five performances remaining between Thursday and Sunday. Find showtimes and tickets at this link.