The much-loved play by Tennessee Williams is hitting Cambridge’s streets once again, and I met with director Joe Richards to discuss how he’s approaching the famously divisive text. Bethan Davidson, who plays Blanche DuBois, and Seth Kruger, who plays Stanley Kowalski, joined us.

“A lot of people are going to have preconceptions of the play,” Joe states. “I’m always a bit wary of deliberately doing something different just for the sake of doing something different. What we have tried to do is really look at the play from more of an interior perspective, so I’ve been looking at using things like the projections of the lights, and music, to really get inside Blanche’s mind. I know that’s something that a lot of people might not like, but in my mind it’s going back to the text, taking a really pure approach.”

The high expectations that accompany the play are something that Bethan was also very aware of: “I know everyone has their own idea of what Blanche and Stanley should be like, but there’s lots of nuances in the text that can be interpreted differently. It’s very clever in that the way Blanche speaks to different characters changes, just as in real life you change depending on who [sic] you are with.

“With Stanley she has this strong guttural edge, like her voice could snap at any minute, whereas with other characters she’s a lot more breathy. It’s this idea that in reality you’re different with different people, depending on what your objective is and what you want. She’s an expert manipulator, whether she intends it or not – until the end, when it all falls apart.”

We talk about the controversy surrounding some of the characters, something that the cast have discussed at length. Bethan looks disgruntled as she admits that Kate Marston, who plays Stella, sees Blanche as the ‘villain’ of the piece. “I don’t think she is. Blanche has many faults and she’s very troubling, but that’s because of the past she’s had and the upbringing she’s had. She’s so innocent that, when the world hit her and reality hit her, she’s tarnished.”

“I wonder whether it’s Kate saying that, or whether Kate’s saying that as Stella,” Seth interjects. “There’s this idea that Stanley feels that other people measure him against this ideal of the American Dream and he doesn’t quite measure up. I guess people see Blanche as this southern Belle and then she’s tarnished, and that’s what starts her descent.” He goes on to talk about the importance of perspective in the play, and the difficulty of judging any of the characters when there is much that is ambiguous. “When Stanley hears a story about Blanche he takes it at face value because it confirms his world view. It’s more important to know what the characters know than what they think is actually true. But maybe you have a different perspective as the director?”, he asks Joe.

“Yeah, I don’t get into the perspective of the characters in the way you do,” Joe replies. “As an audience member watching rehearsals, I know that I have an opinion on how much of it is true and how much of it isn’t true. It’s about the audience and their interpretation. That is the point of the ending of the play – it’s about where the audience thinks it’s going to go next, rather than how we think it’s going to go next.”

Bethan agrees: “There’s so much that’s unresolved. For Stella, knowing that Blanche has said that Stanley has raped her, it leaves her on edge, not believing it or not wanting to believe it. An important part of the play is the changing and manipulating of memory. We’ve done a lot of background work, talking about what our characters did before the play and their childhoods. With Blanche, you never know how much of what she says is true, because it’s all mixed up in fantasy. I know for myself that how you remember events changes in your mind. I’m not quite sure what happens to Blanche. I wonder whether she stays locked up forever… You kind of hope that Stanley will get his comeuppance, though.”

Joe cuts in: “But I think the point of the play is that the world doesn’t work like that. We hope that Stanley will learn his lesson, but there’s a sense that he never really understands what’s gone wrong. None of the characters are entirely likeable; they’ve all got so many flaws, right down to the smaller characters.”

Seth talks about the process of trying to understand Stanley, who is a difficult character to pin down. “I really like it when you go really far back into a character’s past. When you really go back and place a decision that a character’s made within that character’s history and childhood, it gives you a completely different understanding of them as a character. There’s a sense in the play that even when you’ve got happiness, there’s something not quite there.

“We’ve given Stanley a New York twang, because he’s a second-generation immigrant and we figure his dad is from New York. There’s a lot about Stanley emulating his dad, and a real sense of the different places the characters have come from. The dynamics as well – Stanley is very loud, he doesn’t have an inside voice, and Stella picks that up. Then Blanche comes in and jumps at every noise. I was never a fan of adopting animalistic acting styles, but it’s really helped to do an exercise before rehearsals where I go from me, to being an ape, to Stanley.

“I don’t think that Stella ever really understands him as a person. And not knowing what happens afterwards – that not knowing is a form of isolation, which is what so much of the play is about. As an actor, I don’t want you to tell me what happens.”

I ask why the play is so popular and how they will make a play, which is set in a world so different from ours, relevant to a Cambridge audience. “It’s a play about incredibly complex people just like ourselves, and that accounts for a lot of its appeal,” Joe concludes. “We did speak about it as a melodrama, and I rejected that idea out of hand.

“For me a melodrama is removed from your life; because the real world isn’t like a soap opera, it creates a sense of distance. This is a play which is very much a drama that is true to our common experiences. They live in a world that’s removed from ours – it’s got very different social and political circumstances to how we live.

“But the play isn’t about its setting. It’s about the relationships between the characters and the loneliness that pervades their lives, and that’s something that everyone can understand.”

A Streetcar Named Desire will be at the Corpus Playroom at 7pm from Tuesday 23rd February - Saturday 27th February 2016.