After its Broadway opening, A Streetcar Named Desire made Tennessee Williams a Pulitzer winner and Marlon Brando a star, practically overnight.
But Brando wasn’t Williams’ first choice. Streetcar director Elia Kazan loved him; Williams thought the Nebraska-born actor was too young and mumbled too much. No one wanted to play Stanley Kowalski—except Brando.
At least, that’s how Kowalski tells it in Gregg Ostrin’s 90-minute play. The audience knows the ending; the story is in watching Williams and Brando get there.
It wants better content.
The catastrophe of success
“I’m suffering from the catastrophe of success!” Tennessee Williams (Johnny Galecki) laments from his Provincetown summer home. It’s 1947, The Glass Menagerie is a massive hit, and director friend Margo Jones (Alison Cimmet) has just called his new play “genius.”
Casting boorish, rough Stanley Kowalski proves difficult. Kazan begs Williams to consider his 23-year-old protégé Marlon Brando (Jacob Moskovitz), even sending him to Massachusetts to audition. Brando shows up three days late, gum-chomping and unapologetic, though surprisingly willing to fix Williams’ toilet.
Brando also recites Shakespeare and reveals raw vulnerability about his abusive father and alcoholic mother. Still a no, until a surprise visit from Brando’s bubbly not-quite-girlfriend Jo (Ellie Ricker) sparks a game of wits that upends everything Williams thought he knew.
The framing device (an older Williams narrating for a talk-show host) borrows the memory-play trick that made The Glass Menagerie sing, minus the necessity. That, plus a few too on-the-nose touches, are Ostrin’s only real missteps. The verbal volley at the center, fueled by rum cocktails, swing dancing, and unexpected confessions that may or may not be fabricated, is where Kowalski finds its rhythm.
Galecki is a fantastic Williams, oozing Southern-drawled charisma until memories of his institutionalized sister threaten to ruin the party. Moskovitz does his best to embody Brando, but the original’s raw sexuality is one of a kind.
Every behind-the-scenes story wants to earn its keep, but the speculative kind carry real bite. Kowalski isn’t perfect, but a crackerjack script and Galecki’s total command of the room make watching this casting encounter unforgettable.
Is ‘Kowalski’ worth seeing?
Kowalski can’t recreate Marlon Brando’s raw sexuality, but it doesn’t need to, not when Johnny Galecki’s magnetic Tennessee Williams and a quick-witted script carry most of the night.
- Lookingglass Theatre Company, Water Tower Water Works, 163 E. Pearson St., Chicago
- Notable performers: Johnny Galecki, Jacob Moskovitz
- Running time: approximately 90 minutes, no intermission
- Performances through October 25, 2026
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