Stage beauty.(fashion in theater)

"I don't want realism, I want magic! Yes, yes, magic!" cries Blanche DuBois in the Tennessee Williams masterpiece A Streetcar Named Desire. From a fashion hound's perspective,

truer words were never spoken on the stage.

For a full week this spring I gave up my nightly diet of Hardball with Chris Matthews and took myself to the theater-Amanda Peet in This Is How It Goes, the new Neil LaBute play at the Public Theater; Denzel Washington as Brutus in Julius Caesar-and I was really taken aback at how brilliantly fashion has been hitting the boards.

Magic is exactly what Natasha Richardson is, more than any of the other current stars on Broadway, playing Blanche DuBois in the Roundabout Theatre Company production of Streetcar at Studio 54. On the whole, the production is a bit overwrought-with extraneous New Orleans street characters wandering the aisles, and extras breaking into a cappella blues wailing-but Miss Richardson's performance is unexpectedly radiant.

From the moment she arrives on the trolley car called Desire (in a peplum suit and high-heeled beige d'Orsay pumps) to her final tragic walk on the arm of a kind stranger out the door of the run-down railroad flat (in a Della Robbia-blue suit with a shawl hood), Richardson energizes the role.

If a complaint can be made about her portrayal, it is that Natasha Richardson is hardly what you could call a "faded beauty." She looks strong and glamorous onstage. And her clothes! William Ivey Long, the costume designer, could have gone the easy route with marabou trims and ostrich-feather slides, but he's more subtle than that. "Natasha, in meetings with the director and me, said up front, 'I don't want to look like Miss Havisham! I don't want to look pathetic,' " said the Tony-winning costumer when I caught up with him on the Long Island City set of the upcoming film version of The Producers. His Blanche is still a very elegant woman, her long, lean figure caressed in satin and lace.

Richardson has great legs. Long emphasizes those slow-drink-of-water-from-a-Southern-well gams with extremely high, creamy-beige heels. These high, pale heels are a clever touch, another key to Blanche's character: This is a woman who is attempting to retain her towering sense of privilege, struggling to lord it over Stanley as she stalks about his working-class apartment on her teetering pins.