Streetcar And Malfi Critics Flashcards
Frost, about Williams (Streetcar)
He “tried to tell the real truth about human beings, but he never wanted to do that as a realist”
Tischler (Streetcar)
From beginning to end, streetcar is flowing downwards
Lahr (Williams’ staging)
“turned Stanley and Stella’s flat into a background that externalised his own internal war”
Schiach (stage directions)
“function as an omniscient narrative viewpoint very unusual in drama”
Onyett and McBratney (Williams’ stage directions)
“lyrical, poetic”
Bentley (about Streetcar)
“a clash of species”
Fromm (Streetcar)
“alienation, isolation, loneliness… that results from a loss of control of labour”
Williams himself, on Blanche
“a demonic creature”
Clurman (about Blanche)
“a delicate and sensitive woman pushed into insanity”
McDonough, on masculinity in streetcar
Stanley, Mitch and Allan “together epitomise the conflicting masculine identities available in Williams’ stage world”
Miller, on Stanley
“a sexual terrorist”
Whigham, on Ferdinand (Malfi)
“a threatened aristocrat”
Kerrigan, on the cause of Malfi’s violence
“the frustration resulting from… the inability to confess”
Jankowski, on the Duchess’s gender
“unnatural”, “uneasy” to contemporary audiences
Donellan, on the play’s violent portrayal
“the cheapest of plays… watching men torture a woman to death all evening”
Brooke, on Malfi
“a maze of madness and death”
Quinno, on Stanley
“Darwinian survivor and master player”
