Sweet Bird of Youth

The first time I saw Sweet Bird of Youthwas up-close in Chicago’s rather small Studebaker Theater. The opening scene in a cramped bedroom dominated the entire drama, with the feeling of characters hemmed in by their pasts and just as trapped by their hopes (that I didn’t feel they’d realize) for the future.

In David Cromer’s epic production at Goodman, the bedroom is at first behind voluminous chiffon drapery. Before that unfolds to a huge stage, projections show a dim but larger-than-life Heavenly. Like a film career was, she’s a dream Chance Wayne hopes will come truly to him.

With background sounds of waves, the curtains swish to reveal Chance in bed to one side of Princess Kosmonoplis/Alexandra del Lago’s suite and off-center piles of obviously symbolic baggage. At the other end, shutters will be thrown back to reveal a bright outside.

It doesn’t take long for the supposedly fading B-film star to emerge from the bedcovers wondering what the place is and who’s in it with her. And pretty soon, Chance is all but outside the shutters as if looking to find Heavenly. She’s what he’s come to this, his home town, to recapture.

When his old buddies and Heavenly’s father Boss Finley catch up with Chance, it’s in the hotel barroom on a huge turntable that spins into a political rally scene. Chance never has a chance in David Cromer’s blown-up production, but even so, it’s a bit unnerving to have him holding back the curtain to talk to us when the crowd is finally about to bear down on him.

Granted Finn Wittrock’s Chance is a convincing dreamer and talker; he looks and moves less like a would-be film star turned fading gigolo than the fairly recent Juilliard grad the actor is. Diane Lane’s still awfully pretty, too, and an agile slinker into bed and finally triumphant mood. Isn’t she supposed to be less desirable than the ruined-but-passed-off-as-a-virgin Heavenly?

The leads try hard -- especially as the Princess goads Chance into revealing his past -- but they’re mainly less true to Tennessee Williams’ text than John Judd’s powerful, vengeful Boss Finley or Penny Slusher’s sympathetic-to-Chance but scared Aunt Nonnie.

Happily, there’s not a slip-up in the attitudes of well dressed but inwardly lacking others in the large supporting cast. The best thing about this Sweet Bird of Youth is that Wiliams’s wonderful lines are clearly spoken and predominant even over those watery sounds. A good touch that I didn’t remember from my long-ago viewing: having public announcements and scene changes made by an African-American.