Lisa, why do you see STREETCAR as a tonal composition?

Oh, glad you asked. I'm still sorting it out. But it has to do with the obsessively tight patterns that you find in the play, including patterns made out of words, images, character obsessions, sounds, location, and the relationship between past and future.

And there is a feeling -- even when the world spins out of control towards the end of the play, that all of the shifts and changes were "contained" within a certain "key" which is established at the outset of the play. Blanche holds her whole history on her surface when she enters the play in scene one. Her outsider status, the description of her moving like a white moth, her disbelief that this could actually be where her sister lives are all clues to a past that, when revealed, seems SURPRISING yet PLAUSIBLE.

When her secrets are revealed, and seem consistent with the clues that have been given, we, as an audience, confirm our BELIEF in LINEAR TIME (Blanche's present self contains the clues and scars of her past) and we confirm that we can KNOW someone by deducing clues based on their appearance and behavior. There is a logic to it (and a morality too) and the way that the story plays out confirms that this logic does exist.

This seems parallel to the way that classical music establishes itself (usually) within a four measure, articulated phrase, and proceeds to vary itself within the basic rules of that phrase. It can sometimes move very far away from that initial articulated phrase, but somehow, we are always waiting for the security of a RETURN. And part of the pleasure is wondering HOW the composer is going to GET US BACK THERE.

Streetcar seems not only tonal but classical, because when the end of the play arrives, MUCH of the world has not changed. Stanley is still playing poker, Stella is still his wife, New Orleans is still New Orleans, Blanche is leaving (and when she is gone the status quo of the world will be reestablished). However there has been a serious modulation, perhaps a move to a new key, that shifts our relationship to the world of the play. It is the same and not at all the same. Our faith in the playwright has been confirmed - he can move us through linear time and confirm our belief in it - that as we move through it, things will be revealed, that we can learn, understand, see differently, become wiser....

Thoughts? Opinions?