Robin McLeavy - Interview - A Streetcar Named Desire

Making her way down the vast corridor of the Wharf Theatres, Robin McLeavy cuts a fragile figure. She has just completed a day's rehearsal in the Sydney Theatre Company's A Streetcar Named Desire, and seems as weary and shellshocked as a penniless Southern belle newly arrived in a rough, rollicking town.

"It's very demanding," she says. "Because, firstly, the writing is so amazing and it demands emotional truth. Secondly, it's such a great cast - I mean, Joel and Cate. And thirdly, having [director] Liv Ullmann. She is engaged emotionally the whole time with everything everyone is doing, so the atmosphere is really focussed."

McLeavy is playing Stella Kowalski, wife to brutish sexual dynamo Stanley (Edgerton) and younger sister to faded, posturing Blanche DuBois (Blanchett). When Blanche arrives in New Orleans to throw herself on her sister's hospitality, the addled widow has no inkling that her brother-in-law will do everything in his power to destroy her.

"Blanche is this beautiful moth that comes into our grotty, sensual world, and Stanley wants to shoot her down for being refined and pretentious," McLeavy says. "Stella is stuck trying to wrangle these two monsters."

For McLeavy - seen last year in the STC's The Great and Belvoir's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Stella is not a passive victim. "Dealing with a neurotic older sister has taken its toll. And now she's having a child with someone, and she has to mark her territory. Yes, she does fight with Stanley, but that's the life she's chosen. And ultimately she has to choose him or her sister."

One of many shocking aspects of the play for 1947 audiences was the naked lust between Kim Hunter's Stella and Marlon Brando's Stanley. So how is McLeavy's chemistry with Edgerton? "It's good!" the Melbourne-born NIDA graduate reveals. "On the second day of rehearsals we were, you know, kissing and fighting. You find the violence one day and the passion the next, and then the tenderness. The sex is really important with these characters. It's really primal."

Stanley is the role that shot 23-year-old Brando to stardom and changed acting for good. McLeavy reports that Edgerton has been pumping iron and finding the "survivor of the Stone Age" within: "He's broken quite a few props already, and we're only three weeks into rehearsals." When both actors found themselves in the States earlier this year they joined up for a three-day research trip to New Orleans. "In the 40s it was the kind of town where you listen to music and drink, and it still is. Bourbon Street is a lot like Kings Cross to me; it's a pretty free and loose kind of place."

One thing she didn't study while in New Orleans was the local accent, because Stella and Blanche are from Mississippi. The distinction will matter crucially when this production tours to Washington, DC and Brooklyn in October, and McLeavy is stretching her vowels to the limit. "I find myself waking up at night, saying things to myself in the Southern drawl," she laughs.

While admitting Blanchett's talent is "intimidating", McLeavy feels privileged to be working with her STC boss under Ullmann, the red-haired, Norwegian star of searing Ingmar Bergman films such as Persona and Scenes from a Marriage. "Before my audition I was shaking like a leaf, just knowing that Liv had played these incredible characters with such raw honesty. And she brings a great sense of truth to everything we're doing. If we ever do something that seems vaguely like cheating, she just doesn't buy it."

A Streetcar Named Desireplays at the Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay, 1 Sep-17 Oct.

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