Sweet Bird of Youth | Three Dark Plays
In the following review of Tennessee Williams's play Sweet Bird of Youth, author Foster Hirsch gives an overview of the work and writes that while it is sloppily constructed, it remains ''absorbing on a superficial level.''
Sweet Bird of Youth is a Southern Gothic horror story in which a sexually errant male is both punished and deified. Chance Wayne is a gigolo who sells his body in exchange for promises of stardom. As his name blatantly indicates, though, his chances are waning; and at the awkward transitional age of thirty, he grasps with increasing desperation for the movie star fame that eludes him. When we first see him, he is in the middle of his most fevered scheme, playing the male nurse to a fading actress, and prepared to blackmail her (for possession of hashish) into pushing him and his...
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