Genre: Drama, Southern Gothic
Key Stage: Upper KS4+
Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sweet Bird of Youth, Tennessee Williams (1959)
I found Sweet Bird of Youth to be an interesting play – one that I would not have found on my own if I wasn’t recommended it.
This play is quite tragic as it centres around a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, and a faded movie star, Alexandra del Lago. These two have been traumatised and scarred by Hollywood. The play is about Chance and his adventures after returning back to his home town in the south with Alexandra. He hopes to help bring her back into movies and reclaim her glory. Here in his hometown, he tries to win back an old girlfriend Heavenly who he abandoned for New York City.
What I found most particularly interesting was how the story portrayed the dark side of Hollywood, exploring how disease and alcohol destroys not only the body, but the mind too. It reads like a cautionary tale, especially in regards to ambition and expectations, and we see how the feelings of inadequacy and failure haunt Chance combined with his decline into alcoholism as he tries to drink the pain away. Everyone wants to look young and beautiful but that can only last so long and we soon learn that beauty and popularity is fleeting when fame disappears.
Texts similar to Sweet Bird of Youth are: The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman, Ruined by Lynn Nottage and Desire Under the Elms by Eugene O’Neil.
Reviewer: Faizah, Year 12