How perfectly the heart works, when it works…

Poker Night Blues is a collaboration between  the US-based theatre company Theatre Movement Bazaar and Chinese-based Beijing TinHouse Productions. Together, they take an iconic American dramatic text, A Streetcar Named Desire, and deliver it to us with an ensemble of Chinese actor-dancers (although some are possibly Chinese-American) using a brilliant and extraordinary mix of forms of physical performance that include Chinese Bamboo Pole Dancing; American Jazz, Charleston and a dash of Tango ensemble physical theatre; acrobatics; stylised fights; and a kind of heightened hyper-realist acting style that I take (without really knowing) to be coming from Chinese performance traditions. There’s also a dash of crooning, in English: ‘I’d rather have a paper doll to call my own than a fickle real-life girl’. And a lot of card playing.

How well the mind works, when it works…

Tennessee Williams’ iconic text is deconstructed, reduced to its essence, and reassembled – with some sections repeated at different points throughout the show: ‘Stella, we have to get you out of here, you’re a Dubois’, comes round a few times. It’s in Mandarin (with English supertitles), and it bears the mark of a very interesting cross-cultural fertilisation. I’m particularly fascinated by the characterisation of the two sisters at the heart of the story – Blanche and Stella Dubois – with gestures and movements that incorporate and move between very different American and Chinese portrayals of womanhood explored in the play. Like any homage to, or deconstruction of, it adds to the appreciation if you know the original text – but this would also stand up as a piece without that pre-knowledge, as the reduced narrative is delivered very clearly, through words, physicality and gorgeous visual imagery. There is a very lovely scene where Blanche reminisces about her past whilst Stella’s ultra-butch husband Stanley pulls frocks out of her suitcase and holds them up in front of his body, creating a very lovely challenge to his self-image as a macho man.

I leave the theatre feeling that I know Tennessee Williams’ play a little better – particularly enjoying the investigation of gender stereotypes (Eastern and Western) in this production. But I also feel that I’ve been in the hands of a creative team who are in control of their material, and not afraid to use the mores of popular culture in the telling of their tale.

An upbeat, entertaining and thoughtful production for heart and mind.