A SHATTERINGLY emotive production and the fastest-selling in the Young Vic’s history; Tennessee Williams’ timeless masterpiece is the first of this season’s National Theatre Live productions, to be shown at the Eastgate Theatre in Peebles.

Staged at The Young Vic with leading lady Gillian Anderson (The X-Files, The Fall) as Blanche DuBois, Ben Foster (Lone Survivor, Kill Your Darlings) as Stanley and Vanessa Kirby (BBC’s Great Expectations, Three Sisters at the Young Vic) as Stella, the play is performed, filmed and broadcast for the National Theatre Live series.

Gillian Anderson’s performance, described in Variety as hugely impressive, is about one of the most complex theatre characters - Blanche DuBois. As Blanche’s fragile world crumbles, she turns to her sister Stella for solace, but her downward spiral brings her face to face with the brutal, unforgiving Stanley Kowalski.

Benedict Andrews’s ferocious new production makes plain that this honey-voiced aggressor can give as good as she gets. So much so, that the defining tussle between Blanche and her nemesis, Stanley Kowalski, elicits conflicting sympathies as seldom before.

The action is set in present day New Orleans, with great blasts of tumultuous rock music by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Chris Isaak. The staging is equally compelling, with all the action taking place in a sleek modern apartment, which revolves almost constantly throughout the play so that our view of what’s happening keeps taking on fresh perspectives. We see everything from the kitchen to the lavatory in this cramped flat where resentments simmer in the New Orleans heat until they boil over in rage, terror, guilt and mental breakdown.

This production of Tennessee Williams’s bruising modern classic has been described by some as shattering, leaving the audience shaken from the on-stage raw emotion. It will be shown at the Eastgate in Peebles on Tuesday, September 16, at 7pm.