For those who had known him since that start to his career, the second Streetcar was a metatheatrical show in which they witnessed a conversation between the León of twenty-five years ago and the delirious León-Blanco-Blanche of today, as strong and arrogant as the Polack, but more intelligent, with a mixture of fatal femininity and masculinity that disarmed all those around him. I don’t know if the show was very true to Tennessee Williams, I suspect not. Gone was the lyricism of a female Blanche, withered and mad, but the family tragedy exploded into a more brutal, more sinister, more contemporary piece, with hints of Jean Genet. Genet was a sauce we sometimes used to douse our work together.

León was ecstatic. Late triumphs are the ones you savor most intensely. With early triumphs, you don’t have time and you don’t realize how hard it will be to have another.