"A Streetcar Named Desire" at the Broadhurst Theater "The Poker Night" was once the working title for what would become Tennessee Williams's most celebrated work. So perhaps it's appropriate that a poker game provides one of the few moments approaching excitement in the torpid revival of the play that was renamed "A Streetcar Named Desire." That moment occurs early enough in Emily Mann's production, which opened on Sunday night at the Broadhurst Theater, to fan hopes that the show might strike the occasional spark. Four manly men are sitting around a table in a sullen pool of light, studying their cards, swapping insults and looking as picturesque as those figures in the often-reprinted Thomas Hart Benton painting inspired by "Streetcar." And then - boom! - they're on their feet yelling, looking as if they might tear out one another's throats with their teeth. Testosterone has turned into nitroglycerin. And you can't help agreeing when one of these fellows" womenfolk says, "When men are drinking and playing cards, anything can happen." It comes in a flash, that explosion, and it probably wouldn't stand out in most productions of "Streetcar." I wouldn't be lingering on it, except - help me here, I'm grasping at air. You see, the more significant, subsequent action in that scene - a man starting to beat up his pregnant wife, the other men wrestling him down, a floridly feminine visitor aflutter with horror - has none of the spontaneity or urgency of that first eruption. Nor, I regret to say, does anything else in the play, including a rape that leads to the most heartbreaking nervous breakdown in American drama. You may have read that most of the principal roles in this "Streetcar" have been cast with African-Americans, including Blair Underwood (best known for "L.A. Law" on television) as the brutish Stanley Kowalski and Nicole Ari Parker (the Showtime series "Soul Food") as the breakable Blanche DuBois. Ms. Mann has said in interviews that Williams had always liked the idea of an African-American "Streetcar." Given the easygoing ethnic eclecticism of the New Orleans quarter in which the play is set, you could argue that such casting makes a certain sense, especially if you eliminate all nontracking references, like Stanley's being Polish, as this version does. And after the commercial success of the 2008 production of an African-American "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," why shouldn't the same approach be applied to "Streetcar"? Heck, I wouldn't care if all the performers were green and they called it "A Spaceship Named Desire," if the acting were good enough. One of the advantages of theater, where metaphor reigns, is that it doesn't have to be literal minded in the way film does. Part of the contract between any play and its audience is our willingness to make a leap of imaginative faith. James Earl Jones is so unerringly on target playing a former president in the crackling Broadway revival of "Gore Vidal's The Best Man" that I didn't stop to think that a man of his color would never have been elected to this country's highest office in the 1950s. And I was more than prepared to be seduced by Mr. Underwood and Ms. Parker, exceptionally attractive people who can fill a stage just by standing there. But when the woman in the seat beside me started to nod off during the first act of this "Streetcar," I didn't have the heart to nudge her. Handsomely designed by a top-flight team - including Eugene Lee (set), Paul Tazewell (costumes) and Edward Pierce (lighting) - this "Streetcar" is mostly an exquisite snooze. Allow me to say that, to their credit, the performers here don't seem daunted by the ghosts of illustrious actors past. (Cate Blanchett's devastating portrayal of Blanche in 2009 remains tattooed on my memory. And Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando's definitive performances in the 1951 film are still very much with us, on screens small and large.) Mr. Underwood, Ms. Parker, Daphne Rubin-Vega (as Blanche's sister, Stella) and Wood Harris (as Blanche's suitor, Mitch) never give the impression of trying desperately to erase fond memories via outrageously stylized portraits. On the contrary, they speak Williams's lyrical prose in a fluid, conversational style. Often they exude the ease you associate with actors in long-running television series, for whom banter has become second nature. They sound so relaxed, in fact, that you can't imagine that there's ever much at stake - a marriage, financial solvency, sanity. Ms. Parker's Blanche registers as a lively, self-assured gal, accustomed to manipulating others with her feminine wiles. Sure, she's a schemer and, on occasion, a liar. But so was Lucy Ricardo in "I Love Lucy." And whenever Blanche was caught out in a fib - about her age, drinking habits or sexual past - the audience with which I saw the show chuckled indulgently.