I was never into the X Files, I saw one episode which was about incest and was put off for eternity. Many years ago I was chatting with David Duchovny and had no idea who he was, so when he said he was an actor I asked him if he had been in anything I would know, about which I still cringe in embarrassment.

All this by way of saying that I did not book this for the starry casting. But the Young Vic has been on a bit of a roll of late (View from the Bridge was a revelation, as was Mark Strong).

The production is set in the present day, with only Blanche’s wardrobe a throwback to the era in which the play is set (I suspect even the mouldiest of aristocrats in the present-day south would no longer have “summer furs”). The claustrophobic set is beautifully opened up to us, rotating periodically so that no one has a monopoly on being close to the action.

Gillian Anderson gave a wonderful performance as Blanche. Blanche is not a character for whom I have previously felt much sympathy, but she elicited it, not through appeals to emotion but through demonstrating that this woman is not, at first at least, under any illusions as to her position. Anderson’s Blanche is the least crazy I have ever seen (at least up until the night of the birth) and all the better for it. She is choosing her illusions, and really, don’t we all?

Ben Foster’s Stanley is an able match. A compact, strong man who understands Stella from the beginning, he humanises an often brutal role and lets us see the proud man who fought for his country and buys his own liquor. He sucks on his dog tags like they are a dummy (pacifier) and buries his head in Stella as though she was his mother.

Vanessa Kirby is also vulnerable and touching as Stella, although her accent slips from time to time. Her pain over being torn between Blanche and Stanley and her physical enjoyment in her husband are crystal clear and beautifully acted.

There is a minor lapse when, after the scene on the climactic night, all the cast comes on stage to clean up the set, and this took me out of the moment. However, Anderson brings us right back in with a performance in the final scene that is, if anything, better than what has gone before.

There are day seats available for this, and it is being broadcast on 16 September as part of the NT Live programme. Do watch it – you won’t be disappointed.