Cate Blanchett, Co-Artistic Director of the Sydney Theatre Company, has brought her company to Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater for a limited run, through December 20, of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," and because she, her colleagues, and Liv Ullmann, making her United States directorial debut, don't treat it as "make believe," they make us "believe in" it, too.

Blanchett's Blanche Dubois speaks with flirtatious accents when she's decorating a naked light bulb or a naked truth with embroidered fancies and fantasies of the "magic" way she thinks matters ought to be. But she digs deep into searing, plangent tone for the bravura set pieces about things that haunt Blanche-death and loss-and cause her descent into desperation, dissipation and, finally, dementia, and holds us rapt with them. In these-her narratives about the consecutive family deaths and the loss of family mansion Belle Reve that she endured; her "Don't hang back with the brutes" monologue about Stanley Kowalski; her recollection of the young gay man she married, taunted and, likely, drove to suicide; her confession to messy escapades with armies of men at the notorious Flamingo hotel ("the Tarantula Arms!"); and her climactic mad scene, "boxed out of [her] mind," all virtual arias-Blanchett consummately commands the stage.

Her Stanley, Joel Edgerton, is no slouch at set pieces himself and shines as he holds forth about the Napoleonic code and loss of Belle Reve, as he tears Blanche's wardrobe trunk and jewelry box apart; informs Stella about his discoveries concerning Blanche's louche past; rampages through the house on poker night; and hurls crockery during the "Pig-Polack-disgusting-vulgar-greasy!" monologue.

By the time Edgerton tells Blanchett, "We've had this date with each other from the beginning!" we've spent the whole evening hearing subtext illuminated and watching insinuating body language that, indeed, make the cataclysmic coupling foreordained. Blanchett mines every haughty aspersion Blanche casts toward or makes about Stanley for both the 'what a distance from my genteel roots' and 'how I lust for this man' lurking beneath the text. She makes it clear that "a little bit on the primitive side," "My sister has married a man," "What such a man has to offer is animal force," "brutal desire," "downright bestial," "sub-human," "ape-like," "that man is my executioner," and so on, are all double-edged. If he is ultimately the aggressor, she is very much the enticer and inflamer. When Blanchett reaches for a glass of liquor, we note its proximity to Edgerton's crotch. When he goes to silence the radio she is playing and hurl it out of the window, she is sitting on the bed and he is standing over her, already ready to make contact. When he "stalks through the rooms" shirtless, with his belt open, she certainly takes notice.

Blanchett's Blanche, in fact, notices every man-and boy-that we see her meet. She drags a dress over the head of Pablo Gonzales (Jason Klarwein), one of Stanley's poker buddies, who smiles with pleasure, before she makes her big play for poor, naive Mitch (a sensitive Tim Richards), in whom she seeks a safe harbor. In her purring cat-and-mouse dalliance with the newspaper boy (Morgan David Jones), we can see evidence that it's not far-fetched that Blanche would have lost her teaching position because she got involved with a 17-year-old.

If Blanche has left gentility behind, so has her sister, but Robin McLeavy's Stella seems tickled to have done so. When Stanley throws a tantrum, she's "sort of-thrilled by it," and she is so goodhearted that she readily forgives him. Blanche tells us that she "called [Stanley] a little boy" and he's indeed the fearful, tearful little boy when he's howling for "Stell-lahhhhh!" after he's lashed out at her. When Blanchett almost barges in on Edgerton and McLeavy making peace and getting physical, it's clear that she wants what her sister is getting. But Blanche has certainly put some doubts in Stella's mind. When McLeavy's Stella declares, "Mr. Kowalski is ... busy making a pig of himself" and "Your face and fingers are disgustingly greasy," that's Blanche's influence showing, and when all three performers are going at it full tilt, with Edgerton smashing dishes and spitting food at McLeavy, at Blanche's birthday party, the effect is shocking-and electric.

Mandy McElhinney and Michael Denkha are Stella and Stanley's earthy upstairs neighbors, Eunice and Steve Hubbell, and they brawl as noisily as Stanley does with Stella, and soon they're giggling together and drawing the shades for intimacy. Sara Zwangobani is Rosette, another neighbor; Gertraud Ingeborg is the woman ominously hawking "Flores para los muertos;" Russell Kiefel is the doctor, tendering "the kindness of strangers" that Blanche craves: and Elaine Hudson is the creepy matron, conjuring up visions of Mommie Dearest Joan Crawford at her most extreme.

Ralph Myers devised the relentlessly drab flat that Stella and Stanley occupy and that gives Blanche such a shock when she first sees it. Tess Schofield designed Blanche's frills and the blue-collar attire of most of the others. Nick Schlieper's lighting makes its most striking impact at the dénouement.

"Streetcar" plays Tuesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., with Wednesday and Saturday matinees at 2 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m., through December 20. For information on tickets at $30, 65 and 95, for Tuesday through Thursday, and $40, 80 and 120, for Friday through Sunday, call 718/636-4100 or go to www.BAM.org. The Harvey Theater is located at 651 Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn.