SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH The Artistic Home | CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF Raven Theatre
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Alexandra Del Lago, the heroine of Sweet Bird of Youth, was inspired by Williams’s friend Tallulah Bankhead. But there’s much of Williams himself in her as well. A middle-aged movie actress, Alexandra is wracked by the fear that her talent has vanished along with her looks. Yet she can’t bring herself to exit gracefully. “You can’t retire with the out-crying heart of an artist still crying out,” she says, explaining her recent attempt at a screen comeback. Convinced that the movie will flop, she’s fled to a luxury hotel on the Gulf Coast in the company of Chance Wayne, a gigolo she picked up in Palm Beach.
With such a plot, Sweet Bird of Youth might easily be played as melodrama. But Dale Calandra’s staging emphasizes the expressionist poetry of Williams’s vision. Rather than try to re-create a Florida hotel room, Calandra places the action on Mike Mroch’s minimalist white set. Jeff Glass’s shifting lights freeze moments in time, Adam Smith provides an evocative soundtrack of vintage jazz, and actors break the fourth wall, delivering key speeches directly to the audience. The effect is stylized and dreamlike, and we’re drawn into the characters’ inner lives. As Williams intended, Chance’s physical fate becomes less important than the spiritual transformation he undergoes as he accepts the death of his dream. In fact, this is the first version of the play I’ve seen that makes completely clear the reasons behind Chance’s self-sacrifice.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Through 12/19: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, 773-338-2177, raventheatre.com, $20-$40.
