Evening Standard Theatre Awards: Gillian wins Best Actress
Posted at 2:37 PM (PST) on Sunday, November 30, 2014

"Gillian Anderson was electrifying as Blanche DuBois in an absorbing account of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. The part is an exacting one and there have been many great Blanches before (Rachel Weisz won this award five years ago in the same role), but Anderson brought an impressive range of attributes to her portrait of this complex character.

Capturing the delusional pretentiousness and teasing wit of this fading Southern belle, while also exquisitely conveying her loneliness and fragility, she combined toughness with twitchy volatility — and mixed bourbon-swigging glamour with doe-eyed vulnerability.

Benedict Andrews’s production at the Young Vic, on an almost constantly revolving stage and with sharp jolts of music between the scenes, made a play that often seems like a period piece feel bracingly contemporary. Anderson’s Blanche was the vivid centre of this disorientating interpretation — involving, unsettling and ultimately shattering."

-- The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards judges (London Evening Standard: December 1, 2014)