Entertainment
Bare-bones ‘Streetcar’ invites a reconsideration of the Tennessee Williams’ classic
“The Streetcar Project,” a bare-bones production of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” passed through town last week. First stop was an airplane hangar in East L.A., followed by a warehouse in Venice.
I caught the show in Venice on Friday, after a traffic nightmare prevented me from seeing it earlier in the week in Frogtown. The production, co-created by Lucy Owen, who plays Blanche DuBois, and director Nick Westrate, employed a four-person cast. There were no props or scenery (except for a few folding chairs and some basic lighting). The costumes seemed pulled from the actors’ closets. A few sound effects (a rattling streetcar, raucous alley cats) and some period music fleshed out the surrounding world.
The focus was on Williams’ words. At times, the actors spoke their lines from obscure corners of the cavernous playing area. I found myself at times closing my eyes and listening attentively, as though to a radio drama. The production, built to be performed in alternative spaces, sought to get us to hear the play anew.
Most of the time, of course, the actors were front and center. Their appearances, with the exception of Mitch, suggested what the character might be like in a home movie. Owen’s Blanche, battered by life, looked in desperate need of a good night’s sleep. Brad Koed’s beefy Stanley seemed like he just crawled from under a broken-down car.
The plainness of Mallory Portnoy’s Stella was epitomized by the way she cuffed her jeans. The one wild card was James Russell’s “Mitch” (as Harold Mitchell is known to his friends), a leaner and less clumsy version of the character.
Russell was called upon to serve as a utility player, so perhaps it was best that he wasn’t a replica of the lumbering Mitch we’ve come to expect from Karl Malden’s memorable portrayal. Koed was no Marlon Brando, for that matter. But he was closer to the Polish American factory parts salesman than more glamorous Hollywood types striving to live up to Brando’s masculine archetype.
Few contemporary classics have been as defined as “Streetcar” by its original production. Elia Kazan, who directed the Broadway premiere and the subsequent movie adaptation, ushered in a new era of American acting with Williams’ drama
Brando, Malden and Kim Hunter, who played Stella, reprised their Broadway performances onscreen. The one significant cast change was Vivien Leigh as a replacement for Jessica Tandy in the role of Blanche. This shift was in part to alter the dramatic balance of power between Stanley and Blanche. (On Broadway, audiences were so seduced by Brando that some assumed he was meant to be the hero of “Streetcar” and not the play’s brutish antagonist.)
I appreciated the opportunity of re-experiencing the play, though I’m not convinced by this production that “Streetcar” is the everlasting masterwork it is widely assumed to be. I realize this is heresy, but I think it’s important to acknowledge the irreducible strangeness of the drama.
Lucy Owen as Blanche and Mallory Portnoy as Stella in “The Streetcar Project’s” production of “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
(Walls Trimble)
This is the story of a guilt-ridden high school English teacher, who after her role in the suicide of her gay husband, has become a sexual pariah. She was thrown out of her hotel residence for her nightly trysts and was deemed morally unfit to teach after an affair with a 17-year-old boy. Considered a nymphomaniac, a child predator and a loon, she had no choice but to seek refuge at the cramped, tatty New Orleans apartment of her sister, Stella, who wisely escaped from Belle Reve, the DuBois plantation that was lost along with the family’s last remaining connection to the Southern gentry.
Married to Stanley, a man of carnal appetites and vulgar manners, Stella has embraced the crude pleasures of realism, while her freeloading sister still clings to tattered aristocratic illusions. The standoff between Blanche’s impractical aestheticism and Stanley’s ruthless pragmatism is the heart of this quintessentially American drama. Westrate, however, is less concerned with the allegorical meaning of this battle than with the interpersonal dynamics of the combatants.
The production was determined to make the dramatic situation and characters credible for a 21st century audience. But in doing so, the play can’t help revealing its age.
Williams was writing in an idiom that was unique to him. The more stylized approaches of traditional “Streetcar” revivals aren’t just frippery. Williams challenges directors to meet his poetry without losing sight of the play’s earthiness. The characters must be larger than life and one of us.
Although the scenes are often played to music, Westrate’s staging lacks a certain lyricism. When more theatrical elements come into play — such as the Mexican flower lady crying, “Flores para los Muertos” — the staging feels almost intruded upon by an extraneous sensibility. The humor, an integral part of the playwright’s flamboyant arsenal, is also missed. In the final scene, the mix of secondary voices, pinballing among cast members, makes for a confusing pileup.
The lack of sentimentality was admirable. Owen’s bedraggled Blanche, too exhausted to keep up with her own lies, seemed complicit in her own demise. Koed’s Stanley, full of class grievance, had a vengeful look from the outset. Portnoy’s Stella clearly loved Blanche but didn’t seem to like her all that much. Russell’s Mitch was as in touch with his animal needs as with his guilty concern for his sick mother.
The true compensation of this “Streetcar” was the way the language was translated by the actors into natural-sounding speech. Each performer made the dialogue ring true to contemporary mores. The resulting authenticity passed the verisimilitude test with flying colors. But Williams, like Blanche, wants magic, not the realism of today’s TV drama.
“Streetcar” may be Williams’ most exciting and even hypnotic play, but I’m not sure it’s his best. (I prefer “The Glass Menagerie.” Theater critic Gordon Rogoff once made the astute observation that Williams was always better at writing scenes than constructing seamless dramas and that his true gift may have been as “a pointillist painter of shimmering portraits.”
That’s enough genius for any writer, but Williams goes further by offering actors the opportunity of incarnating his interior poetry. He also gives directors the chance to prove that the theater can simultaneously capture the sweaty and symbolic levels of our lives.
The production’s simplicity ditched the cliches that have accumulated around the play over decades. But it also reminded us that naturalism is only one thread in the multi-hued fabric of Williams’ playwriting.
“So it’s like Avatar?” one character quips in Disney and Pixar’s “Hoppers,” bluntly translating the film’s high-concept premise for the sugar-fueled kids in the audience. And yes, the comparison is apt. The story follows a nature-obsessed teenage girl who manages to quite literally “hop” her consciousness into the body of a robotic beaver in order to spark an animal rebellion against a greedy mayor determined to bulldoze their forest for a freeway.
It’s a clever hook. The kind of big, elastic idea Pixar used to make look effortless. “Hoppers” does not reach the rarified air of “Up,” “Wall-E,” or “Inside Out,” but after a stretch of uneven originals like “Turning Red” and “Luca,” and outright misfires such as “Elemental” and “Elio,” this feels like a genuine course correction. The environmental messaging is clear without being preachy, the animals are irresistibly anthropomorphized, and the studio’s once-signature emotional sincerity is back in sturdy form.
Pixar can afford to gamble on originals when it has a guaranteed cash cow like this summer’s “Toy Story 5” waiting in the wings, but “Hoppers” earns its place in the catalogue. Director Daniel Chong crafts a warm, heartfelt film that occasionally strains under the weight of its own ambition, yet remains grounded by character and theme. Its meditation on conservation and animal displacement feels timely in a way that never tips into after-school-special territory.
We meet Mabel, voiced with bright conviction by Piper Curda, as a child liberating her classroom pets and returning them to the wild. Her moral compass is shaped by her grandmother, voiced by Karen Huie, who imparts wisdom about nature’s sanctity. True to both Pixar tradition and the broader Disney playbook, this beacon of guidance does not survive past the opening act. Loss, after all, is Pixar’s favorite inciting incident.
Years later, Mabel is still fighting the good fight, squaring off against the smarmy Mayor Jerry, voiced with slick menace by Jon Hamm. He plans to flatten the glade where Mabel and her grandmother once found solace. Mabel’s resistance feels noble but futile. The animals have already mysteriously vanished, the machinery is coming, and her last-ditch plan involves luring a beaver back to the abandoned forest in hopes of jumpstarting the ecosystem.
That’s when the film gleefully pivots into mad-scientist territory. At Beaverton University, Mabel discovers her professor, voiced by Kathy Najimy, has developed a device that can project human consciousness into synthetic animals. The process, dubbed “hopping,” allows Mabel to inhabit a robotic beaver and infiltrate the forest from within. It’s an inspired escalation that keeps the film buoyant even when the plotting grows predictable.
Her new posse includes King George, a lovably beaver voiced by Bobby Moynihan with distinct Bing Bong energy; a sharp-tongued bear voiced by Melissa Villaseñor; a regal bird king voiced by the late Isiah Whitlock Jr.; and a fish queen voiced by Ego Nwodim. As is often the case with Pixar, even in its lesser efforts, the world-building is meticulous. The animal hierarchy, complete with titles like “paw of the king,” is layered with jokes that play for kids while slyly winking at adults.
The plot ultimately follows a familiar template. Scrappy underdog rallies community. Corporate villain twirls metaphorical mustache. Emotional third-act sacrifice looms. At times, you can feel the machinery working a little too cleanly. Pixar, and Disney at large, has grown increasingly reliant on sequels and established IP, and “Hoppers” does not radically reinvent the wheel. In an animated landscape where films like “K-Pop: Demon Hunters,” “Across the Spider-Verse,” and “Goat” are pushing stylistic and narrative boundaries, being safe and sturdy may not always be enough.
And yet, there is something refreshing about a Pixar original that remembers how to tug at the heart without squeezing it dry. “Hoppers” is playful, peppered with cheeky needle drops, and builds to a sweet emotional catharsis that may or may not have left this critic a little misty-eyed. It feels earnest and engaged.
“Hoppers” may not be top-tier Pixar. But it is a welcome return to form, a reminder that the studio still knows how to marry big ideas with a bigger heart.
HOPPERS opens in theaters Friday, March 6th.
Entertainment
How a mural of Altadena became a symbol of resilience for one small store, through fire and flood
Every time Adriana Molina drives up Lake Avenue to her retro-style women’s clothing shop Sidecca in Altadena, she sees the new outdoor mural she commissioned for the store by muralist and illustrator Annie Bolding. It gives her hope.
“I’m here to stay, and this mural solidified my decision to reopen my business,” said Molina on a recent winter day, sitting next to Bolding inside the boutique. “I grew up in Altadena. The community has motivated me this whole time, and I want them to drive by this mural and smile.”
“ALTADENA.” The word — in big white letters, set against layers of blue — appears toward the top of the mural, on the store’s brick wall facing Lake. Above are the San Gabriel Mountains, painted a deep brown, California poppies and Mariposa Street and Lake Avenue street signs. Below are green grass, a monarch butterfly and Altadena’s Christmas Tree Lane. A bright blue house is on a multicolored striped path in the middle of the mural. Next to it, on a hiking trail, a sign says, “Welcome Home Altadena… With Love, Sidecca.”
For Molina and Bolding, the mural is a personal ode to the Eaton fire-ravaged community — art as a message of optimism and healing.
A car passes by the new Altadena mural on the side of Sidecca apparel shop, which commissioned the piece after fire and floods devastated the community.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
When the fire tore through Altadena in January 2025, Sidecca and a few other stores on the north side of Mariposa Street’s bustling Mariposa Junction survived, while the other half-block of businesses burned to the ground. The fire leveled Bolding’s parents’ house off Lake and the home of one of Molina’s close relatives.
Molina staged pop-ups and sold merchandise online during months of remediation, and officially reopened Sidecca’s doors in November as part of Mariposa Junction’s larger comeback. Then the store suffered another blow: flooding and damage during rainstorms in late December. While Molina prepped to temporarily close her store yet again for renovations, Bolding began work on the mural. She started painting on the one-year anniversary of the fire and finished eight days later.
“On the day I started it, it was so cold and windy, and I was scared being up on the ladder,” said Bolding. “But getting to talk to community members while I was painting was very special. People were excited and honking as they drove by. That night, I drove up to the lot where my parents’ place was, and I stood there and all the feelings flooded back.”
The mural’s origin story is that of two creative women bound by strength and a desire to give back.
Molina, who has worked in the fashion industry for more than 30 years, opened Sidecca’s Altadena spot in 2023, after closing its longtime Pasadena location. Voted Pasadena’s best women’s clothing store five times by Pasadena Weekly, Sidecca sells fun vintage-inspired merchandise and clothes, from ‘50s style dresses to snazzy magnets, tote bags and sunglasses. A big rainbow zips across the top of one of the store’s walls.
A display in Sidecca in 2023, two years before the Eaton fire devastated Altadena.
(Alejandro R. Jimenez)
“A few months after Sidecca opened in Altadena, my mom walked in and saw how colorful it was, and said, ‘This reminds me of my daughter,’ ” Bolding said. “With zero hesitation, my mom said to Adriana, ‘Here’s her Instagram. This is my daughter’s stuff.’ ”
Bolding, who goes by Disco Day Designs, calls herself “a joyful creator who loves to intentionally transform spaces.” Known for the bright murals she creates for brands and shops, Bolding gained attention on social media for a trash bin she painted with palm trees and stripes. She brought it to the 2024 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival as part of a contest organized by the festival’s sustainability partner, Global Inheritance.
“I fixated on the trash can,” said Molina. “I looked at Annie’s murals and was like, ‘Oh, she has to do something in here for us.’ ”
“Game recognizes game,” added Bolding, smiling.
Molina wanted to rebrand Sidecca with a new logo, bags and art, and connected with Bolding about that and a possible mural inside the store. “I wanted ‘Sidecca’ painted across a wall as an acronym that stands for style, individuality, diversity, expression, community, culture and art,” she said. “That’s who we are.”
Then came Jan. 7, 2025.
The store was closed all day for a holiday lunch. Then the winds picked up and the flames roared. Molina, who lives with her husband and two children on the Altadena-Pasadena, evacuated with her family to Long Beach and came back days later. She knew the store was OK because she’d seen it — intact — on the news.
“As soon as we could come up to the shop, we went,” Molina said. “There were ashes all over.”
Bolding and her husband were in Palm Springs fixing up an AirBnb they cohost when Bolding got a call from her mom about the fire in Altadena. She urged her mom, dad and younger brother to evacuate. After they did, their home burned down. Her parents now live in a Pasadena apartment.
When Molina started selling Altadena-themed merch on Sidecca’s website, Bolding donated three designs, including one with lively retro daisies. In July, she wrote an email to Molina reviving the idea of a mural, but outside versus inside, as an ode to Altadena.
“It felt like anything I could do to bring joy, let’s go,” said Molina. “And I really wanted a little house in there, and for it to say, ‘Welcome home.’ ”
The mural would be Bolding’s first public piece of art on a main street.
“Lake always felt like the road going home,” she said. “That rainbow road in the mural, leading to the mountains, is so symbolic. Very ‘Wizard of Oz.’ The mountains, their silhouette, have always felt majestic, safe, and why it was so heartbreaking anytime to see them burn. To me, they feel like mother.”
Muralist Annie Bolding stands in front of her new Altadena mural on the side of the Sidecca apparel shop. The work is Bolding’s first piece of public art on a main street.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Bolding’s joyful daisies decorated the Sidecca tote bag given to customers at November’s reopening, just before December’s intense rainstorms. Water gushed through Sidecca’s ceiling. Molina and her employee Manisa Ianakiev were overwhelmed.
“We were like, ‘Is this really happening?’ ” said Molina. “Then people started bringing tools and towels. It was an example of community.”
Bolding planned to start painting the mural Jan. 4, during the Altadena Forever Run, but rain swept through. After Molina’s landlord installed a plywood base, Bolding started on the mural several days later.
Since then, the shop’s ceiling has been replaced, and Molina is working on trying to replace the floor — while continuing to stage pop-ups and sell merchandise online — before fully reopening the bricks-and-mortar boutique this spring.
“People say, ‘Every time I go into your store, I just get happy. I’m in a better mood,’ ” said Molina. “I get that all the time. And what Annie has done, this mural, is beautiful. It makes me happy.”
Just when you think Pixar’s petting-zoo cute new movie “Hoppers” is flagrantly ripping off James Cameron, the characters come clean.
movie review
HOPPERS
Running time: 105 minutes. Rated PG (action/peril, some scary images and mild language). In theaters March 6.
“You guys, this is like ‘Avatar’!,” squeals 19-year-old Mabel (Piper Curda), the studio’s rare college-age heroine.
Shoots back her nutty professor, Dr. Fairfax (Kathy Kajimy): “This is nothing like ‘Avatar!’”
Sorry, Doc, it definitely is. And that’s fine. Placing the smart sci-fi story atop an animated family film feels right for Pixar, which has long fused the technological, the fantastical and the natural into a warm signature blend. Also, come on, “Avatar” is “Dances With Wolves” via “E.T.”
What separates “Hoppers” from the pack of recent Pix flix, which have been wholesome as a church bake sale, is its comic irreverence.
Director Daniel Chong’s original movie is terribly funny, and often in an unfamiliar, warped way for the cerebral and mushy studio. For example, I’ve never witnessed so many speaking characters be killed off in a Pixar movie — and laughed heartily at their offings to boot.
What’s the parallel to Pandora? Mabel, a budding environmental activist, has stumbled on a secret laboratory where her kooky teachers can beam their minds into realistic robot animals in order to study them. They call the devices “hoppers.”
Bold and fiery Mabel — PETA, but palatable — sees an opportunity.
The mayor of Beaverton, Jerry (Jon Hamm), plans to destroy her beloved local pond that’s teeming with wildlife to build an expressway. And the only thing stopping the egomaniacal pol — a more upbeat version of President Business from “The Lego Movie” — is the water’s critters, who have all mysteriously disappeared.
So, Mabel avatars into beaver-bot, and sets off in search of the lost creatures to discover why they’ve left.
From there, the movie written by Jesse Andrews (“Luca”) toys with “Toy Story.” Here’s what mischief fuzzy mammals, birds, reptiles and insects get up to when humans aren’t snooping around. Dance aerobics, it turns out.
Per the usual, “Hoppers” goes deep inside their intricate society. The beasts have a formal political system of antagonistic “Game of Thrones”-like royal houses. The most menacing are the Insect Queen (Meryl Streep — I’d call her a chameleon, but she’s playing a bug), a staunch monarch butterfly and her conniving caterpillar kid (Dave Franco). They’re scheming for power.
Perfectly content with his station is Mabel’s new best furry friend King George (Bobby Moynihan), a gullible beaver who ascended to the throne unexpectedly. He happily enforces “pond rules,” such as, “When you gotta eat, eat.”
That means predators have free rein to nosh on prey, and everybody’s cool with it. Because of bone-dry deliveries, like exhausted office drones, the four-legged cast members are hilarious as they go about their Animal Planet activities.
No surprise — talking lizards, sharks, bears, geese and frogs are the real stars here. They far outshine Mabel, even when she dons beaver attire. Much like a 19-year-old in a job interview, she doesn’t leave much of an impression.
Yes, the teen has a heartfelt motivation: The embattled pond was her late grandma’s favorite place. Mabel promised her that she’d protect it.
But in personality she doesn’t rank as one of Pixar’s most engaging leads, perhaps because she’s past voting age. Mabel is nestled in a nebulous phase between teenage rebellion and adulthood that’s pretty blasé, even if a touch of tension comes from her hiding her Homo sapien identity from her new diminutive pals. When animated, kids make better adventurers, plain and simple.
“Hoppers” continues Pixar’s run of humble, charming originals (“Luca,” “Elio”) in between billion-dollar-grossing, idea-starved sequels (“Inside Out 2,” probably “Toy Story 5”). The Disney-owned studio’s days of irrepressible innovation and unmatched imagination are well behind it. No one’s awed by anything anymore. “Coco,” almost 10 years ago, was their last new property to wow on the scale of peak Pixar.
Look, the new movie is likable and has a brain, heart and ample laughs. That’s more than I can say for most family fare. “A Minecraft Movie” made me wanna hop right out of the theater.
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