Customer Reviews

Sweet Bird of Youth

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'd like to see this play. Why? Because there is an incredible amount of angst, self-pity, self-agrandizment, posturing, emoting, and innocent awe. It is also short, surprisingly too.

Chance is a hyper-sexual ne'r' do'well whose coupling with Princess, a hyper-vain Hollywood Queen suffering from lose of face after an amazingly bad "come-back" film, lands them in Saint Cloud, Chance's old stomping grounds, and perhaps some sort of symbolic nowhere town, dead to the world and quite possibly changeless. His appearence is bad news, as he generally is bad news. Princess, who is significantly older is so wrapped in her vanity and stardom, or there-lack-of, has latched onto Chance, because they are similar and desperate for what each other has.

Sweet Bird of Youth is not a nice play. These are people who are not likeable, nor funny, and their desperation almost defines them. I say almost, because they are also passionate and hopeful, even in round about ways. They are symbols of Time's heavy hand, extravegance, unfortunate fame, addicts, wayward souls.

Sweet Bird of Youth belongs in the second tier of Williams' plays. After Streetcar, Cat, Glass, and with The Rose Tattoo, Suddenly, Last Summer, and Orpheus Descending. Full of loud, troubled people on point of hysteria, whose sexual, or emotional hunger is suicidal and beyond reason. But lacking in broad connection to the world, in familial dynamics and struggle. In that way I recommend Sweet Bird of Youth for the Williams' lover or admirer, not someone who wants to know his best work.

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was well established as a major talent by the 1944 THE GLASS MENAGERIE. By the end of the 1950s he was easily among the best regarded dramatists in world theatre. But although Williams continued writing until the year of his death, after about 1960 he found both critical and popular success increasingly elusive.

SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH opened in 1959 starring a remarkable pairing of Paul Newman and Geraldine Page and ran for about a year--but subsequent stagings and adaptations have not been as successful. A film version starring Newman and Page tampered with original script and emerged as stodgy instead of exciting; a major 1975 Broadway revival lasted fifty performances; and the play has not fared as well over time as such works as A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. It is rarely studied and rarely performed.

SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH concerns a handsome drifter named Chance Wayne who has been picked up by a neurotic and has-been movie star with the unlikely private name of The Princess Kosmonopolis and the stage name of Alexandra Del Lago. After a drug-and-alcohol fueled road trip through Florida, the two have arrived at the semi-resort community of St. Cloud, the location of which is not specified but which from other geographic references seems to be on the Mississippi gulf coast.

It happens that Chance has specifically come to St. Cloud in the hope of reuniting with his teenage love Heavenly Finley. We soon learn that on his last visit Chance gave Heavenly a nasty veneral disease that ultimately resulted in a hysterctomy, and that Chance has been warned away by Heavenly's father local political power Boss Finley, a vicious racist who is behind the recent castration of a black man accused of seducing white women. Heavenly's Aunt Nonnie and Boss Finley's mistress Miss Lucy warn him away; when Alexandra Del Lago recovers from her stupor and finds that her come-back film was a success, she too urges Chance to forget his young love, accept the fact that time has passed it by, and escape with her to California. But Chance refuses to leave, even though he knows that his efforts are futile, and the play ends with the strong implication that he too will be castrated by Boss Finley's minions.

There are several difficulties with the play. The first is that the story is essentially a re-writing of Williams earlier ORPHEUS DESCENDING, which was a horrendous failure on Broadway in 1957 but which is nonetheless a noticeably better script. SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH is also somewhat awkward in its shifting between realism and theatricality, the plot is somewhat implausible, and the second act is weak. But perhaps the single most deadly problem facing SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH is that there isn't a likeable character in the entire play, with the possible exception of movie star Alexandra Del Lago, who ultimately accepts herself for what she is and has the good sense to walk away before the carnage begins. And this too is yet another problem with the play: we are never allowed to see the carnage, we are only left to assume it.

All things considered, SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH is not among the genuinely great Williams plays, and indeed Williams would write only one other masterpiece, the 1961 NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, before beginning the rapid slide into alcohol and drugs that sapped his talents. But oddly, the very problems with SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH are what make it interesting, challenging, intriguing; one longs to see a really good staging of it and thereby know for certain if it works better on the stage than it does on the page. Interesting, but newcomers to Williams' work would do better to begin with the more obvious titles.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Don't see the movie instead of reading the play, in fact, don't see the movie at all, because it is TERRIBLE. It changes the ending completely, and lacks the overall spirit of the play. With "Sweet Bird of Youth," Williams has created something touching and brilliant. If you like Williams' other plays, you will like this, but if not, you won't. A wonderful dramatic landmark. Amazing.

The first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space. This review applies to both the stage play and the film versions with differences noted as part of the review

Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller as America's finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams' extensive and detailed directing instructions).

That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.

"Sweet Bird Of Youth" is a case in point. Not for the first time, a seemingly 1950's style All- American boy Chance who has left his hometown, his home town girl and his roots behind to drift in that endless spiral toward fame- Hollywood and the movies, naturally- comes back to claim what is his by right. On this little hometown reunion Chance is in the service of one aging and fretful actress who has her own issues with that elusive `bird of youth'. In his return to town it appears that Chance has stirred up a hornet's nest with the local political establishment in the person of one red-neck preacher turned politician in order to better do "god's work", old Tom Findley. The object of this dispute is one Heavenly Findley, old Ton's daughter and Chance's left behind paramour who is now the subject of some scandal (due to the amorphously stated need for female-related medical treatment due to Chance's irresponsibility). Along the way we get to see how political power is distributed in a small Southern town as well as the inevitable tempting of the fates by Chance in order to win the `brass ring' before it is too late (apparently somewhere over thirty, by my reckoning). At play's end though, where he is between a rock and a hard place, Chance may not get the chance to be Chance at thirty. Oh, that fickle bird of youth. Still, Chance, go for it.