I want to write about a play I’ve seen, but this isn’t a review. For two reasons.

Firstly, I went on the final night of its Smock Alley run, so it would constitute unusable advice.

And secondly, although I read reviews I often do not admire them.

The subtext of much criticism (which on average, is average) sets out to show how clever the critic is, how poorly the director has understood his trade, and how, despite first appearances and lasting applause, the actress has failed properly to grasp the nuance of the text.

This last sentence is written in critic-speak. I distance myself from its patronising airs.

***

Tennessee Williams was a screaming queen, name-called ‘Miss Nancy’ on his Mississippi streets of youth. His friends, whom he loved and with whom he mostly fell out, adored the very thing the neighbours reviled. Gore Vidal would label him ‘The Glorious Bird’.

Williams was a man who lived inside of those he cared for most. He would consume their innards in a quest for intimacy. Afterwards, through his beautiful writings, he wondered why the empty shells of friendship so loudly whistle in the wind.

It’s 15 years since I picked up his autobiography, Memoirs, at a second-hand sale. It had threads hanging from its hard cover, and someone’s name on the inside page.

Tennessee describes a wild, wild ride.

He loved to live in the liminal spaces of life; loved sex too much to ever stay long on the porch; and wrote his plays to comment on the unspeakable truths of life.

‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ is a work of such majesty, it is hard to accept that it was typed up by a man with the smell of sex on his fingers and liquor on his breath.

Well, maybe it wasn’t. But probably it was.

In mid-20th century America, homosexual sex was nowhere to be seen, and everywhere to be had. It was forced to hide in plain sight, and very many men found they liked it. Anonymity suited them. It rendered the sexual act more brutal, less subject to feelings.

Sex was seed. And the Glorious Bird loved it.

***

I read the text of A Streetcar Named Desire at the same time as I enjoyed those Memoirs.

Plays are astonishingly fast and direct to read, when they’re not written by Shakespeare. With stage directions included, they are a gift for directors and players.

Tennessee was generous as a playwright. He took the time to fix on detail, so the set-designer might choose a better bulb, or the costumer might select a more perfect rhinestone tiara.

‘There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.’

The portrayal of Blanche Dubois’ fall into madness during the summer of 1947 is one of the great works of 20th Century art. It is built upon endless detail.

Take, for example, the stage directions for Stanley Kowalski.

Williams’ channeling of Blanche’s nemesis, shrink, rapist, and brother-in-law, is so memorable. He invites the actor playing Stanley to enter the two-room tenement and to fully command its walls.

Those directions, from the script, read as follows:

‘Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes. Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependency, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens. Branching out from this complete and satisfying center are all the auxiliary channels of his life, such as his heartiness with men, his appreciation of rough humor, his love of good drink and food and games, his car, his radio, everything that is his, that bears his emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer.’

There is an age when a young man reaches the zenith of his physical authority. He knows the world, but has yet to show the lines. He knows his body, but the wear has yet to tear. The young man does not know this is his zenith, but he feels it. His task is to live with violent immediacy, and so never to regret the ebbing, by way of responsibility, debt or doubt.

A young Irish actor, Jack Meade, delivered a molten, physical performance of Stanley last night at Smock Alley Theatre, in Dublin. He moved through his arc from rough diamond, to unrepentant brute – by way of a beaten-up pregnant wife, a destroyed sister-under-law, a manipulated male friend, and a more tightly controlled nest into which the next Kowalski might hatch.

Stanley is every hook-up the Glorious Bird ever found in the undergrowth.

He is the revenge of ‘Miss Nancy’.

***

And then there’s Blanche.

In 1996, I saw Jessica Lange on the London stage portray the moth-like Ms Dubois. I recall her fragility, somehow unwilling to cooperate with gravity.

In the play, Blanche Dubois is proud of her weight, boasting she has not put on a pound in ten years – the period during which she faded, from a thing of beauty to a thing invisible.

“You’re as light as a feather” says the noble and manipulated Mitch, after lifting her high, in an act of courtship.

And it’s true. Blanche floats on her own anxieties.

Eavan Gaffney, a young Irish actress of deep intensity, lit the stage in Smock Alley last night. Her vulnerability was raw and believable. So much so that I smarted when she took her bows, and revealed her confident self. Who is this, I thought. Who is this imposter who has taken over Blanche?

***

I met a school-friend there by chance, and we dissected what we saw, over a beer. We concluded that Blanche had lost her mind before ever buying a ticket, catching Desire, transferring to Cemeteries, and getting off at Elysian Fields – to arrive at Stella and Stanley’s door.

We decided that she had, over several years, lost her shirt to drink and gambling, and had become the local prostitute, working the Flamingo Hotel.

Lying was her stock-in-trade.

But there was one of her stories which we know is true, because Stella retells it in her absence. The accounts tally.

Blanche married when she was a young girl, aged 16. The young boy, Allan Grey, was homosexual. Blanche discovered this when she found him, by chance, in bed with an older man.

At first, no one said anything.

But later that night, on the dance-floor of the casino, she could not contain herself from speaking the truth. She whispered in his ear, “I saw! I know! You disgust me…”.

The kid left the floor, and shot himself in the mouth down by the lake.

Those whispered words of reproach were the last time Blanche Dubois told the truth.

The teenage widow promptly upgraded to fantasy. She began to float. And the moth would not rest, until it found its flame.