Cate Blanchett smoulders in Desire

AUSSIE star Cate Blanchett is winning standing ovations and rave reviews from US audiences for her heart-rending performance in the Tennessee Williams classic A Streetcar Named Desire.

More than 60 years after the play debuted on Broadway, Blanchett and her Sydney Theatre Company on Saturday launched 24 performances at the Kennedy Centre in Washington, all of which are already sold out.

Blanchett, 40, plays tragic, fading southern belle Blanche DuBois, who arrives unannounced at the home of her sister Stella, to be met by open hostility from her violent brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, played by Australian actor Joel Edgerton.

Norwegian actress and director Liv Ullmann directs this stark, smouldering version of Williams's classic, immortalised in the film version starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando.

"For Blanche, the truth is mortal. I don't believe she is mad. I believe she's in horrible agony, and I believe she makes her own ending," Blanchett told The Washington Post.

The Post's theatre critic lavished praise on her on Monday, saying Blanchett was "certainly the most heartbreaking Blanche I've ever experienced".

"This is the kind of evening you want to urge people to see, to remind them of theatre's illuminating range, its ability to force you out of your resistant natural scepticism, to assess, reflect and feel," he added.

In September, during a preview performance in Sydney, Blanchett was injured during the show when she was accidentally hit on the head with a prop radio by Edgerton, and fell to the floor with blood gushing from the wound.

The company next travels with the play to New York.

Blanchett gained international fame in 1998 when she played the former British queen in the film Elizabeth. In 2005, she won an Oscar for her role playing Katherine Hepburn in the movie Aviator.

But she remains devoted to theatre, and along with her husband, playwright Andrew Upton, she directs the Sydney theatre, the largest in Australia.

Blanchett returns to the big screen next year in Robin Hood starring alongside Russell Crowe.