Reviving Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth has not been an easy task. The 1959 play, which originally starred Paul Newman and Geraldine Page had hopes for a 2011 Broadway remount to be directed by David Cromer with James Franco playing Chance Wayne a wayward actor turned gigolo and Nicole Kidman as manipulating movie star Alexandra Del Largo. As financial and scheduling problems began to encumber the production, it became clear that the perfect venue would not be Broadway, but at the Goodman Theatre, bringing Mr. Cromer back home to Chicago.
Sweet Bird of Youth is an intriguing piece of theater but is often considered the problem child of Williams' genius offspring and always seemed to suffer from an identity crisis. Much of that crisis, it can be argued, is because the basic core message of the play was never clearly materialized. That was until Mr. Cromer's brilliant staging and the perfect casting of Finn Wittrock and Diane Lane. It is no secret of Tennessee Williams' issues with addiction, and the worsening of it after his schizophrenic sister was lobotomized and spent the rest of her days in an institution. The exposition of Youth is caught between two mediums, drugs and hard sobriety. It is in that "in-between" haze that Mr. Cromer's version shines.