Ihre Arbeit Ich mag is about the only German I know. It means I like your work and I only know it because I once ran a theatre where I met a lot of international artists and often needed to be obsequious. Last night I had the chance to drag out my single phrase again when I chatted to German performer, Sabrina Strehl after her single night engagement of BLANCHE here in Sydney. No grovelling required, instead I fangirled her … I really do love her work.
The BLANCHE of the title is Tennessee Williams’ Blanche. In this solo performance , Strehl takes the essence of Miss White Woods and sends her, Pirandello style, in search of an audience.
Desperate for love and approval, Blanche reaches out and allows the audience to write her while still arriving at the main plot points of A Streetcar Named Desire, finishing by acknowledging the kindness of strangers.
Strehl is there on stage when the audience enters and begins by asking us to assist her in finding her sister Stella’s place. These direct appeals to the audience continue as she prepares for a party of sorts. Dragging things out of her suitcase, she needs help doing up buttons and lighting cigarettes and opening champagne. However, things go downhill for Blanche’s involvement with her audience as her drunken behaviour deteriorates.
“ The party’s over” she declares as she rips off her blonde wig and declares herself a seagull; no an actor; no a teacher of Literature. And there is literature all through this show. Not just Williams but Poe and Miller and Schiller. Strehl tells me that there is Chekhov in there too. Blanche is in her own story, in Redfern, in Sydney and lost.
The performance was originally realised in German but when Strehl and her Israeli director, Schlomo Lieberman, took the show to Tel Aviv they created an English/German hybrid. In the first half, the German is occasional and fast, with few pauses inside sentences and limited pauses in between. In the second half, when our ears are tuned in, there are more tracts that are completely German.
The English words that drive through that foreign white noise propel us through the story. Say ‘Mitch’ or ‘Shep Huntley’ or ‘Caribbean Cruise’ and Blanche is quite clearly travelling towards the fantasy escape which will form the climax of the work.
As an audience member, there is much to be said for being allowed to sit back and have an artist’s work wash over you. It represents the opportunity to engage with the art at the heart of the performance.
My friend, who only has half remembered echoes of the original play, did this. He felt rather than heard the loneliness and neediness when the story dropped out for him. For me it was different. I was engaging with the foreign language that is all over the original play. It was Creole or the Mexican woman selling flores para los muertos or Stanley Pollack’s cadences.
None of this theorising about the production style would really be of any interest unless the acting is good. And it is. When Strehl peers into the distance for some invisible stranger, we all turn our head to see what she sees. Her belief is constant and the laughter and sadness, music and abrasion, creation and decay dwell in the well-modulated voice and expressive eyes of a performer who exists within the role.
Strehl’s performance is quite an achievement. It takes tight technical control to resist the urge to overact when speaking to an audience who doesn’t understand you.
Her interpretation of the “half in shadow” love speech is masterful. There is such a powerful undercurrent of Blanche just wanting the thing out of her. Strehl creates this by small smiles and stillness and strain through her entire body as she sits on the edge of the bathtub that dominates the set.
The setting is simple and Strehl says she should have made a documentary about the adventure of getting the bath organised but I’m glad she made the effort. The light and the water are the motifs of this show. Moonlake Casino and the paper lantern collide to make the magic which Blanche craves and which this talented artist personifies.
It was sad to see that there was only such a small audience at the venue to see such an exciting piece. I really hope that there was a scout from the Sydney Festival amongst those attending.
This show deserves a longer run and a wider audience.
Great international theatre making, Sabrina Strehl’s BLANCHE played for one night only at 107 Projects on Saturday 21st February.