Crazy situation surrounding the new performance of the National Theater, Nightshade. The new text by Annet Bremen, directed by Belle van Heerikhuizen, was announced as an adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (known in the Netherlands as Tram line Desire), the 1947 classic by writer Tennessee Williams. That announcement has been withdrawn. Nightshade is now presented as a new text. But anyone who reads the text (the premiere is April 25) is surprised by this, because the most important plot elements of Nightshade are the same as those of Tram line Desire.
Both texts concern a confused-looking woman who is taken in by her sister. This woman mourns a husband who committed suicide. The sister has a rough type of guy for a husband. That husband has a friend who he is trying to set up with the woman. That fails. The woman fantasizes and lies wildly, and this leads to tensions between the three cohabitants. The discharge comes on a night in which the man rapes the woman. The next day the woman leaves.
Both plays in a nutshell, and in both cases the rape is the dramatic climax. The main differences are that Nightshade does not contain the many side lines in Williams’ story, that Bremen chooses her own words to tell the story and the characters are no longer called Blanche, Stella and Stanley, but are nameless.
During a conversation in Theater aan het Spui in The Hague, Bremen denied that an adaptation was ever intended. “An error was made by the National Theater with that announcement. The idea has always been that I would write a new play. There was no question of an adaptation from the start. Williams’ descendants read my text and said that it is not an adaptation, but a new text.” To the statement that the similarities between the plot of the classic and her plot are enormous, Bremen answers: “I can’t say anything about that.” And to the follow-up question whether she should say this from the lawyers: “A Streetcar Named Desire is one of my sources of inspiration.”
Also read
The National Theatre’s somber but fascinating ‘Nightshade’ can be seen as an incentive
This is endorsed by The National Theater, which shares a statement from Williams’ agent, who says that Bremen has “significantly rewritten and revised” Williams’ text in such a way that there is sufficient difference between Nightshade and Street car. The requirement is that the company does not mention Williams and his text in the marketing.
What’s funny about all this is how literal it is Tram line Desire the set designer has inspired. The setting for this contemporary version of the relationship drama is an openwork metro car, suitable for a performance that you can imagine Metro line Desire could mention.
The situation is also unfortunate, because Bremen was the last year talk of the townas the author of the widely acclaimed F*ck Lolita. She gave Lolita, the protagonist of Nabokov’s classic novel of the same name, the floor to harshly point out generations of filmmakers and readers to their sexist interpretations and to their celebration of pedophilia by branding a thirteen-year-old girl as a seductress. But a second performance by Bremen as a merciless avenger who rubs a misunderstood female role in a classic under your nose is not an option. At least, you won’t hear her say it.
Annet Bremen.
Photo Sanne Delcroix
How has ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ been an inspiration?
“I also had other sources of inspiration, such as the novel Kitchen from Banana Yoshimoto, the album Let Them Eat Chaos of Kae Tempest and the movie All of Us Strangers. Just like Nightshade that film is about losing your grip on reality and a search for love and being seen. What I took with me from Street car was the loneliness of a woman seeking comfort from her family and her search for intimacy and connection. But what also occupied me while writing was the position of the sister and the man. What do you do when someone is traumatized and needs care? The sister’s strategy is not to talk about it, the man actually wants that.”
The woman is in mourning.
“She cannot let go of her loved one, because she thinks his death is her fault. And she thinks that not thinking about him is almost adultery. She is so clinging to the past that she cannot connect with the here and now.”
What kind of woman is this?
“Someone who had a spontaneous, theatrical personality as a child. The fantasy she did then has now become a toxic survival mechanism. She is always on the run.”
Real life is boring, she says.
“Not every day is full of fire and passion, that’s just the way it is, but that’s what she lives for. She is a romantic who has the quality to see the beauty in details and who wants to avoid getting into a rut.”
What is her relationship with sexuality?
“It is complex. She longs for intimacy, but sex is also a narcotic. And she actually doesn’t want to settle for sex with any body, because every time afterward she feels even more devastated and misses love even more.”
‘Nightshade’ by the National Theater.
Photo Andreas Terlaak
Is she a strong woman?
“Then you come to the question of what a strong woman is. It is so easy to think that it must be a woman who knows what she wants and goes for it. That is a limited definition. What I agree with [regisseur] Belle [van Heerikhuizen] a lot about it is that we want to bring her vulnerability to the stage, but we don’t want her to be crazy or hysterical. That story has been told too many times. The woman is making an attempt to break free from her demons and you should appreciate that attempt.”
What kind of man is the man?
“A much more angular, rougher type than the sisters. That is also in the language. When things are mentioned figuratively, he responds to them literally. For the sister he is an escape route. Someone who offers her a different life.”
Does he represent a certain type of man?
“No, I didn’t want to make him a stereotypical bastard and macho. I didn’t want to make the three main characters black and white but gray. You shouldn’t expect him to rape the woman.”
How do you achieve grayness during a rape?
“I was interested in the idea that the man almost does not realize what is happening. For him, the rape is misinterpreted intimacy. The woman is sad. He tries to comfort her, physically. And then there is a sliding scale to intimacy and sexuality. He also says sorry afterwards. Because afterwards he does realize what happened.
“The fact that it happens like this is something that I think happens much more often. And I wanted to show that. The man is not a crazy person from the manosphere. This is about more men.”
The rape is a misunderstanding, a mistake, without bad intentions?
“That could be rape, right? The documentary Blue balls by Sunny Bergman is about rape myths. Bergman speaks to many men who say they have never raped anyone. And she speaks to many women who say they have been raped. Because of how she lets women talk about it, there are men who eventually say that they did it. This is such a story.
“What also plays a role is that the woman is unable to stop the rape. She lets it happen to get away from it. That is tragic. She dissociates. Escapes to another place in her mind.
“I wrote the scene in a somewhat diffuse manner. It can be interpreted in multiple ways. The woman talks, but what she says can be interpreted in different ways. She speaks in the third person, because she steps out of the situation. Sometimes a sentence seems like a description, sometimes a memory, sometimes an invitation.”
In ‘Streetcar’, Blanche is taken to the sanitarium the next day. With you, the woman leaves the next day herself. Is there hope for her?
“The modern city plays a role in this performance. The woman is visited by the neighbor, who invites her to visit her. I used it this way because many people are lonely, while we live so close to each other. It is a call to form a social fabric and to look at the people around you. This woman needs help. She cannot do it alone. But giving help is an assignment for all of us.”
Is this a feminist text?
“Not as a preconceived plan. But if feminism means exploring all colors and angles of womanhood, then I think this piece certainly makes an attempt to do so. It is an invitation to delve into this woman and sympathize with her.”
