“I don’t want realism. I want magic!” Blanche DuBois says in the 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire. A new Lookingglass Theatre Company production, titled after that play’s main character, Stanley Kowalski, is a magical fantasy Blanche would surely appreciate.
Kowalski is a fictional story where Marlon Brando visits Tennessee Williams in his Provincetown, Massachusetts, beach house to audition for Williams’ new project. Williams nicknamed the waterfront property Rancho Pancho after his lover, Pancho Rodriguez, who lived there with him in the summer of 1947.
Besides the trio of men, two other women factor into Kowalski’s narrative: Margo Jones, who was a close friend of Tennessee and Jo, a fictionalized girlfriend of the young Marlon Brando.
The fierce cast shines in a complicated queer story that never stumbles with stereotypes. Actor Johnny Galecki (The Big Bang Theory) is outstanding as the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tennessee Williams. During an interview with Windy City Times, he described the obstacles involved with exploring Williams’ background, noting that, “There are just as many chasms as there are bridges.”
Galecki continued, “We barely scratched the bottom of that barrel because it was so vast. After I read the script, I looked up an interview and his accent sounded so delicious, but very manufactured. I knew it was going to be a challenge.”
The other half of the drama-infused duo is Jacob Moskovitz, who personifies a multilayered Marlon Brando on the Lookingglass stage.
Moskovitz, a University of North Carolina School of the Arts graduate, intensely studied the background of his character. He told Windy City Times, “I made a timeline up until the night they met and some of it felt like my life, but most of it did not. He was a leader, not a follower and he broke every rule.”
Moskovitz noticed Kowalski is set in the time period beginning of Brando’s “bicurious days” which influenced many of Moskovitz’s acting choices. He portrayed Brando with trepidation, stating, “He had been to Provincetown before and he had relationships with men there in the past. He didn’t want Tennessee Williams to know that, so he was nervous about meeting him.
“Marlon wanted this role, but he didn’t want to have sexual relations with Tennessee to get the part. He used his attractiveness as a weapon and as leverage in the situation with Williams.”
Galecki added, “These two characters revel in being unpredictable and it would be a disservice to reconcile their contradictions. They can’t be reduced to a first assumption or be simplified by categorizing them.”
Alison Cimmet, who played the original Margo Jones in the 2025 Off-Broadway production of Kowalski in New York City, returns to play the energetic director/producer in the Windy City production.
Jones had a creative partnership with Williams, and he referred to her as the “Texas Tornado.” In real life, Jones co-directed the original staging of The Glass Menagerie in Chicago. In Kowalski, she is hoping for more collaborations with Williams.
“There is a gender side to the story where Margo Jones was a producer in a male-dominated industry,” Cimment said. “It was interesting to navigate her issues not only in business, but also in her relationship with Tennessee.”
For his Chicago debut, New York City-based actor Reece Dos Santos diligently prepared for the part of Tennessee Williams’ frustrated lover Amado “Pancho” Rodriguez y Gonzalez.
“He experienced so much prejudice in the ‘40s,” Dos Santos said. “He was someone who felt invisible in the world he lived in and he was around theater people, which made him feel like even more of an outsider. This character was fascinating and complex for me to dig into. Pancho felt he wasn’t being taken seriously even though he was used as a muse to write Stanley Kowalski.”
Ellie Ricker portrays Brando’s girlfriend Jo; she was another Off-Broadway cast member returning to Kowalski. She said, “When I auditioned for Jo, I fell in love with her because she is just like me. She’s a conglomeration of different women. I am queer in real life and my character is an ally in this story about queer men.”
Kowalski marks a return to acting for Galecki after a seven-year hiatus. He prepared to portray Williams by reading two biographies offering contrasting depictions of the famed playwright, both of which he considered in his portrayal.
“In one, he was very casual and in the other, he was ruthless,” Galecki said. “He could sometimes be both in the same sentence. Someone can be loving and ruthlessly truthful at the same time.”
Kowalski summons the spirits of Williams and Brando now through Oct. 25 at the Water Tower Water Works, 163 E. Pearson St., in Downtown Chicago. Visit lookingglasstheatre.com for further information and tickets.