Paul Mescal and Patsy Ferran star in Rebecca Frecknall's production of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Frecknall’s distinctive aesthetic (the staging is starkly designed by Madeleine Girling), and the enlivening demands it places on audiences’ imaginations, was visible in the recent Broadway revival of Cabaret (which some critics did not like; I did, very much), where the company danced, writhed, and sung atop a raised stage.

Beauty, in Miller’s sense, is not on Frecknall’s menu. Blanche’s costumes (by Merle Hensel) make no pretense of prettiness, just as the staging leaves her no dignity. The lighting (by Lee Curran) is harsh and the sound (by Peter Rice) harsher. The drums obscure some of the dialogue.