When read
ing A Streetcar Named Desire, something that stood out to me was the usage and placement within the stage directions for musical cues, as well as the type of music to be used for the scene. I went back through the book several times to count and infer where elements of the score were implemented and counted twenty-two times the ‘blue piano’ music was directly mentioned or inferred (including clarinet, trumpet, and drums accompaniment), and sixteen times that the polka–the ‘Varsouviana’–was directly mentioned. At the beginning of the book, the stage notes say what exactly the ‘blue piano’ music was meant to represent, which was the ‘spirit of life which goes on here.’ As for the polka, that is left for the audience to interpret as they will, but it is most prominently played whenever references to Blanche’s past are talked about or even, presumably, when Blanche even thinks about her past. The first time the polka plays is during scene one, when Stanley (rudely) asks Blanche if it’s true that she was married once. This could be interpreted as foreshadowing as the music is so starkly different from the jazz New Orleans is known for.
Were the music missing from the production, it would be incredibly difficult to understand what may be going through the character’s minds. In a play, the score plays a prominent part in enrapturing the audience and pulling them further into the emotions that characters experience and the story itself.
Something further, perhaps tragically ironic, is that when I looked researched where polka music originated from, it turned out to be Slavic (i.e. Czech, Polish, Central/Eastern European) in origin. A running gag throughout the play is Blanche referring to Stanley as a Polack due to his name (and probably heritage as well).