WE WERE on top of a hill in Mold. No, we weren’t. We were immersed in America’s deep south where voices drawled, passions simmered and violence flared in an instant.

A Streetcar Named Desire at Theatr Clwyd is big on atmosphere. It all goes on in two rooms, sparsley furnished, dimly lit, on an open verandah-style set, with inky black surround. An often haunting soundtrack ratchets up the tension, giddy lighting effects shock.

Who expects a disco scene to Madonna in Tennessee William’s classic play about dangerous family dynamics?

His Streetcar viscerally exposes eternal human emotions: desire, dominance, loneliness, power, need. Director Chelsea Walker’s contemporary production made sure these got maximum exposure on the stripped-down set and that the story, including violence towards women, is still relevant.

The aim was to show how the crux of the play speaks to us now, as both she and designer Georgia Lowe say in programme notes.

So Into a hot, shadowy world came Blanche Dubois, a woman in deceptive, virginal white, tugging a white suitcase as full of secrets as she was. Her visit to kid sister Stella was innocent enough, but when her suspicious, volatile brother-in-law Stanley strutted into this claustrophobic space, everything changed.

As he probed and mocked this woman, who called him Neanderthal behind his back (but unfortunately for her he overheard it) explosive rows fuelled by alcohol blaze the stage.

Walker exploited the strengths and the weaknesses of characters caught up in a clash of gender, class and sexual desire.

So poor Blanche, who needed sme kindness’, instead saw her secret, tawdry past life dragged into the bright light she hated. Stella defended her sister but was rapt in her abusive husband. Stanley was macho to the extreme, yet howled with pain and remorse.

In an edgy, disconcerting production. people sat on the table, stood on chairs, danced on the bed, lolled against invisible walls Movement was constant, sudden, contrasting with bouts of intensive stillness when you held your breath.

Kelly Gough’s Blanche was indeed a needy woman, and desperation was always beneath her portrayal. It invited our sympathy. She could create the stillness, but she could also cover the stage in a demented whirl. She conveyed well the poignancy of a woman slowly disintegrating before our eyes.

Yet she didn’t always convince, perhaps lacking in the charisma this character demands, and sometimes her words were indistinct. The strain of maintaining the southern accent was occasionally apparent, and not just with Gough.

She excelled in her clashes with Patrick Knowles’s Stanley. There was a real chemistry between these two. Knowles dominated whenever he was on stage. His restless energy infused all around him and carried all before it, including Amber James’s nevertheless spirited Stella.

The production flagged a little during the odd courtship of Blanche with Dexter Flanders’s stoic Mitch. But there was no denying the drama of the last scene, with a part dismantling of the set echoing Blanche’s sad decline.

It didn’t blow you away but it packed a punch, in fact a lot of punches, a strong, immediate interpretation of this Tennessee William’s classic.