John Lahr is a genius, but I think he's wrong about John C. Reilly, whom he says "has a pushed-in face and a strapping soft body [and] is not particularly comfortable in his own flesh," making him unfit to play Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire. I can't agree. I've always thought Reilly was full of an appealing and barely checked fierceness at his core, which is what made his performance in Chicago so good—sure, he (as Amos Hart) felt sorry for himself, but what kept him from punching everyone in the nose was a sense of the moral superiority of the rules (which are meaningless amid so much corruption, but that doesn't make Amos less noble for refusing to cave in). And his "Mr. Cellophane" solo, and dance, are enough to prove he's comfortable in his own skin, if not always happy in it. Maybe Reilly isn't playing Stanley right (I haven't seen it yet), or he hasn't been directed well, but I don't think he's inherently wrong for the part. The overlooked, martyred type can be sexy; the slow scheming of the melancholy can be deadlier than the outburst of the easily provoked.

Not related but amusing: this anecdote from John Lahr, related by David Aaronovitch in the Guardian:

...Americans (the snobbish Frasier notwithstanding) seem to be less worried about ostentation [than the British]. In fact, they like it. A writer friend of mine, John Lahr, recalls going as a child to the Californian mansion of the inventor of car radio, one Earl Muntz. Muntz, a famous huckster, was by now into television (he named one of his daughters Tee Vee), and had installed a television at the bottom of his swimming pool.... The people around the pool that day didn't sigh and whisper 'vulgar' under their breaths. They just enjoyed Muntz's eccentricity.