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| Diane Lane and Finn Wittrock/ Photo: Liz Lauren |
As a proud and unabashed fan of director David Cromer, my year has been a tumult of ups and downs. The native Chicagoan's reconfiguration of Jonathan Larson's "Rent" in April at American Theater Company was a dimly lit, squeaky-voiced affair that left me cold, uninvested, and frankly quite outraged. Lo and behold, several months later, "Tribes" at New York's Barrow Street Theatre proved among the most moving and generously acted family dramas I've seen anywhere in recent seasons, and Cromer's direction was just about the easiest in-the-round staging one can possibly imagine.
Coming down from the perilous annals of domesticity and coming home to the dark and dreary alleyways of Chicago's Loop, Cromer's new revival of Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth," which opened on Monday night at the Goodman Theatre, falls somewhere in the middle of the two. Its impeccable highs are stratospheric in all around heft, while its lows, though sure-fire failings, are still comfortably airborne.
Cromer, ever lauded for his revelatory "Our Town" by The Hypocrites in Chicago and at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York City, has done well by a challenging text. Williams' "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" was recently announced for a Broadway revival, the show's fourth, to open 2013. The third in a decade. "Sweet Bird of Youth," originally on Broadway in 1959, has been revived only once, in 1975, and has yet to be seen again on The Great White Way. The play and Goodman's comeback kid production are not unlike main character Alexandra Del Lago, tirelessly endeavoring to be renewed. Cromer nearly scored a Broadway theatre for his revival a season ago, but plans were ultimately scrapped. This is not without reason.
