Rachel Weisz: A great Blanche DuBois?

She will play the lead in the Donmar's A Streetcar Named Desire this summer. But isn't she a little too fresh-faced? The best Blanches have lived a little, says Alice Jones

The Donmar has done it again. Just as Jude Law will be preparing to hang up his skull as Hamlet in the theatre's new West End home this summer, Rachel Weisz will skitter out on to its more modest Covent Garden stage as Blanche DuBois, the tragic, fading heroine of A Streetcar Named Desire. The decision, just announced by the Donmar, is the kind of casting coup audiences have come to expect from Michael Grandage's perennially glamorous theatre machine, which can always be relied upon to sprinkle a little stardust over London's theatreland – often with dazzling results.

Weisz is – as anyone who saw her passionate, Oscar-winning turn in A Constant Gardener knows – a magnificently intelligent and intense actress. But Blanche DuBois? The hysterical, old-maid schoolteacher who avoids overhead lighting like a vampire and whose youth has, in her own words, "gone up the water spout"? Isn't the actress, who last appeared at the Donmar as the girlish Tennessee Williams heroine Catharine in Suddenly, Last Summer, a little too fresh-faced to play the daisy that has been "picked a few days"? Blanche is a woman who has spent the last few years frittering away her Daddy's plantation, drinking in unsuitable watering holes and spending the night with endless unsuitable men: it ought to show in her face. At the very least, one imagines, the Hollywood pin-up, with her feline cheekbones, glossy black hair and Roland Mouret-enhanced hourglass figure will need a make-under to play the raddled lady in decline.

The playwright's wishes regarding Blanche are fairly obtuse – she is around five years older than her sister, Stella, who is around 25. Otherwise, the script advises only that "there is something about her uncertain manner that suggests a moth". At 38, Weisz is about the right age for Blanche, on paper. Indeed, she's the same age as both Jessica Tandy – the original Blanche on Broadway in 1947 – and Vivien Leigh – who famously played her in the London premiere, directed by her husband Laurence Olivier, and on screen, opposite Marlon Brando – when they took on the role.

"Blanche is still vital and still making decisions about her life," says Rob Ashford, who will direct the production in July. "Rachel is primed to bring her to life, not in an ethereal way but in a vital way. I hope it will play so much better if there's still hope for Blanche. She's on the decline but it makes the stakes higher if she's not entirely washed up."

Nevertheless, the character's obsession with her decaying looks and declining years and her frequent white lies about her age and experience – not to mention the sheer quantity of lines and complex depth of character – have long made her a dream role for the more mature actress. After all, Blanche's concerns are their concerns, giving an already rich part an added frisson.

On Broadway, Tallulah Bankhead – whom Williams had in mind when he was writing the role – was 54 (and, thanks to her famously wild lifestyle, probably looked at least 64) by the time she got round to tackling the nervy dipsomaniac in 1956. In fact, she turned out to be Williams's least favourite Blanche, with the tipsy playwright refusing to speak to her at the opening night party, sulking loudly that she had "pissed on [his] play". They later reconciled as Williams publicly acknowledged that her performance improved throughout the run in a letter to The New York Times. "She brought to mind the return of some great matador to the bull ring in Madrid, for the first time after having been almost fatally gored..."

Blythe Danner, mother of Gwyneth Paltrow, was 45 when she was Tony nominated in 1988 (critics noted particularly the expressive fluttering of her "pale, bony hands") and Jessica Lange was also well into her forties when she took on the role. Claire Bloom, an actress who has always radiated a grown-up elegance, was 43 when she appeared in the feted 1974 West End revival. In the UK, the most recent incarnations have been by Glenn Close – fierce at 55 – and the ageing diva Renée Fleming, who gave the first operatic performance at the Barbican in 2003.

Though far from ancient, these were all Blanche as played by an actress of a certain age. "She is an actress' Lear. You wait until a certain age and then you give your Blanche," agrees Ashford. "It's a part of such enormity, people expect a certain maturity." Weisz, who is still young enough to be cast as a Hollywood love interest, is not quite in that austere bracket yet. Her beauty and youthful bearing may prove to be a hindrance, as they did for the late Natasha Richardson, who played Blanche on Broadway four years ago, aged 42.

Though praised by The New York Times for embodying the character's "ambivalent sexual hunger", Richardson's performance ultimately fell down on her looks. She was simply too radiant to play the frayed-around-the-edges heroine. "Somebody has to tell Blanche DuBois that she really doesn't need to worry so much... As incarnated by a truly radiant Natasha Richardson, Miss DuBois appears as pretty, dewy and healthy as a newly ripened peach. Let them bring on those naked light bulbs, Blanche honey. You look marvellous," sniped the waspish critic Ben Brantley. "This Streetcar suffers from fundamental mismatches of parts and performers... Ms. Richardson's uncannily fresh face does not bear the marks of suffering."

"When a girl is over 30," sighs Blanche, "men lose interest quickly." And so, apparently, do directors and writers: the lack of meaty roles for grown-up women is the actress' constant lament. Once the age of Juliet and Desdemona is past, the theatrical landscape looks decidedly barren, the competition for the odd Arkadina or Phèdre is fierce. No wonder Blanche, with her gloriously melodramatic mix of secrets, seductions and addictions, has been seized upon by middle-aged actresses – she's one of few roles they're still allowed to play. Weisz's casting could start a worrying trend for an already beleaguered demographic. Earlier this month there was speculation that pop's fallen Southern belle Britney Spears was to play Blanche in the West End. Whatever next – Miley Cyrus as Lady Macbeth?

Still, for all the many complexities Weisz faces as she takes on Blanche, she has at least avoided a vetting by the exacting playwright. A letter from Williams to his trusted producer Irene Mayer Selznick reveals that Leigh, who would go on to win an Oscar for her Blanche, was not, initially, a popular choice for the London premiere. "Mme Olivier has not yet given us a ghost of an idea of her latent dramatic powers," he wrote peevishly in 1949. "If only we could be devastatingly frank with Sir Laurence and say, 'Honey we want you but could do without her!'" Good luck, Rachel.

'A Streetcar Named Desire', Donmar Warehouse, London, 23 July to 3 October (0870 060 6624)

Five great Blanches

Jessica Tandy: Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, 1947

The first Blanche and universally praised for an emotionally true performance. On opening night, the applause apparently lasted 30 minutes, with the loudest bravos reserved for Tandy and Marlon Brando.

Blythe Danner: Circle in the Square Theatre, New York, 1988

Aristocratic in a fragile kind of way, Danner was perfect, perhaps inevitable, casting as Blanche and was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance.

Claire Bloom: Piccadilly Theatre, London, 1974

Bloom received rave notices for her elegant Blanche opposite Martin Shaw's Stanley in this West End revival. Critic Irving Wardle praised her ability to "delicately dispense Southern coquetry over an undertow of hysterical panic".

Tallulah Bankhead: City Center, New York, 1956

The playwright and the wild actress initially fell out over her comically camp performance, with Tennessee Williams branding her debut "the worst I have seen" – to her face. She improved as the run continued and her Blanche was considered a tour de force.

Vivien Leigh: New Theatre, London 1949

Even her Oscar-winning turn in 'Gone with the Wind' wasn't enough to persuade Tennessee Williams that Leigh would make a good Blanche. But the playwright, aware of the prestige of an Olivier-directed production, eventually relented. Leigh's is now regarded as the quintessential Blanche: her performance in the 1951 film earned her a second, deserved, Oscar.