Spring theater is a sweet young, sad lil' bird...

The Dramat's Spring Experimental production of Sweet Bird of Youth, a lesser known work of the tragic genius Tennessee Williams, makes you want to kill yourself. It makes you want to get up from your seat in the theater and shoot yourself in the head, quickly, ruthlessly, and before you might accidentally live for one more second. In other words, it did exactly what Williams wanted it to do.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH Things ain't lookin' so sweet down south for Tennessee Williams' lovebirds

Set in the late 1950s, Bird is an agonizing tale of lost youth and pathetic, hopeless futures set within Williams' oft-used framework of a deeply troubled family living in a small Southern town. Chance Wayne (Michael Braun, TC '00), an aspiring young actor, returns to his hometown to find his mother dead and his true love, Heavenly (Natalia Payne, TC '03) tucked away in disgrace under the guarded eye of her domineering father, the wealthy and powerful "Boss" Finley (Ryan Karels, BR '00). He has brought in tow the once-great middle-aged actress Alexandra del Lago: hostage, lover, and would-be patron who is so ashamed of her washed-up status that she insists on referring to herself as the Princess Kosmonopolis rather than hear anyone speak her own tarnished name. Del Lago, played with eery authenticity by Tevis Garrett Graddy, BK '00, is as pathetic a figure as anything short of Greek tragedy. Drugged, delirious, and obsessive over her lost youth, beauty, and fame to the point of sheer insanity, she agrees to use her money and fading Hollywood influence to help Wayne get his girl back and find the road to stardom—in exchange for his sexual devotion.

Graddy almost flawlessly embodies the role of a miserable Hollywood actress clawing at a lost ideal that never really existed in the first place. She stumbles around the stage in a constant state of hysteria, her eyes literally rolling back in her head, her exaggerated aristocratic accent barking incoherent demands at anyone who will pretend to listen. Costume designers Michelina Cairo, SY '00, and Caroline Duncan, SM '02, skillfully aid Graddy's transformation into both the glamorous prima donna that del Lago wishes she were and the ridiculous, vulnerable woman the audience knows her to be. Strutting around first in a luxurious pink silk robe (sporting pink-puffed high heels) and later in a blinding gold dress topped with a feather cap, del Lago fits into her pseudo-Puritan Southern setting about as well as Larry Flynt at a NOW meeting. At the same time, this mistress of fantasy is, ironically, the only authentic person in town. Selfish and eccentric as she may be, her overt excesses only highlight the repressed torment with which the rest of the characters must struggle. "Not everybody wants to hurt everybody," she tells Chance—a lesson that becomes harder and harder to believe as the horrific storyline of Bird unfolds.

Although Graddy's performance powers the show, the strengths of minor characters, like the delightful gossip-loving Scotty and Violet Budedna (Thomas Pearson, BK '01, and Sarah Pike, TD '00), ground even the most difficult scenes of Williams' heavy script. Laura Crescimano's, BR '00, simple set, veiled at times behind a transparent curtain, also provides a fine backdrop to the action. More disappointing, however, were the sometimes one-dimensional portrayals of Finley and his redneck racist buddies. Williams' open contempt for the violent and deeply bigoted culture of the wealthy South must have been shocking to contemporary audiences in 1959. To the modern desensitized viewer, however, the script did not leave much room for Karels and Cary Clarke, ES '02, who plays Finley's son Tom, to move beyond the obvious stereotypes of their characters. The predictability of their words and actions slow down the intensity of the closing scenes and make the ending seem almost formulaic. Still, Graddy and Braun eventually come to the rescue, rattling off a torrent of smart and devastating exchanges that send the story racing to its final conclusion.

Theater

Sweet Bird of Youth Directed by Luca Borghese University Theater Experimental Space Fri., Mar. 31, 7 and 10 p.m. Sat., Apr. 1, 2 and 8 p.m.

For all its inspired acting and thoughtful staging, however, the true brilliance of any Tennessee Williams play always owes the most to the playwright's remarkable use of language—and Sweet Bird of Youth is no exception. Williams' poetics are shockingly beautiful, almost Shakespearean in their ability to evoke with a single line the sorts of powerful and timeless emotions that normally take an author hundreds of pages to achieve. His unending deluge of passionate metaphors become classics as soon as they hit the audience, worthy of posting on a refrigerator or recording in a diary for posterity. Perhaps Williams' most impressive accomplishment, however, is his ability to make the audience believe that his commonplace characters would regularly say things of such brilliance—without seeming forced or unnatural. Despite its complexities, Sweet Bird of Youth is extraordinarily accessible, a tragedy that bites and twists at many of my own most deeply felt fears. "Out of the passion and torture of my existence, I have created something I can unveil," Princess Kosmonopolis says as she makes her final exit. Her audience can only hope to one day say the same.

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