It is not Tennessee Williams's best-known work, but 'Sweet Bird of Youth' examines a changing society that has much in common with our own, writes Amy Redmond
Tennessee Williams once said: "Whether or not we admit it to ourselves, we are all haunted by a truly awful sense of impermanence." As we tear into the 21st century his words seem to have even more truth. The power of great theatre is its ability to freeze fragments of life, allowing us to revisit, reimagine and even reinvent ourselves again and again.
In the space behind Connolly's bookshop in Temple Bar, 20 actors are working with the New Theatre on the Irish premiere of Williams's Sweet Bird Of Youth. Rehearsals are in progress - and they certainly seem to have started from scratch. Their voice coach is having them recite the alphabet in turn: finding the precision and confidence to act with a southern-US drawl can require rigorous training.
Set amid bigotry, racism and political corruption, Sweet Bird Of Youth follows Chance Wayne, a two-bit gigolo who has hooked up with Alexandra del Lago, an ageing movie star travelling incognito as Princess Kosmonopolis. They arrive in his home town of St Cloud, on the Gulf of Mexico - or, as Wayne refers to it, the Gulf of Misunderstanding. Wayne has come back for his sweetheart, Heavenly, the daughter of Boss Finley, a local politician. It begins on the morning of Easter Sunday, and Williams's symbolism gives plenty of eating and drinking for the actors' six weeks of rehearsals.
Tim McDonnell, the play's director - and leader for the past three years of the Stanislavski studio at both the New and Focus theatres - believes Sweet Bird Of Youth is one of Williams's greatest plays. It was first seen on Broadway in 1959, when it was directed by Elia Kazan and the lead roles were played by Paul Newman and Geraldine Page.
McDonnell chose the play partly because of the complexity of its relationships. He is also fascinated that the action is set at the start of the end of an era: the 1960s were just around the corner and the civil-rights movement was emerging. The play's most striking feature, he says, is that nearly all the characters, especially Chance, are trying to hold time in a bottle. The play, as he points out, is prefaced with lines from Williams's favourite poet, Hart Crane: "Relentless caper for all those who step / The legend of their youth into the noon."
Irish audiences will clearly relate to its portrayal of political cronyism; it is also a mirror image of Ireland's increasingly two-tiered and racially tense society. But McDonnell is adamant that people will still be able to make up their own minds about the play's message when they see it. "The common denominator of all great drama is that it never remains purely on the level of ideas," he says. "It has got to engage you emotionally, intellectually and imaginatively, otherwise it is redundant."
McDonnell is not a great believer in what he calls the "impositional" director. He bemoans the fact that, in the past eight to 10 years, Irish theatre has to some degree allowed the "concept" to become all-pervasive.
He believes that the production values of some leading Dublin theatres have led them to compromise the creative roles of both writers and actors and in some cases leave audiences confused more than anything.
No wonder writers are terrified of new directors, he says.
He admits he isn't an "an establishment guy" and says he has found kindred spirits at the New Theatre. The team is working on a profit-share basis, which means they stand to earn a wage only if the show makes money.
McDonnell, who uses a wheelchair following an accident, prefers to rehearse at night, as he suffers from neurological pain during the day. He received an Obie award in 1989, for his performance of Nikolai Gogol's Notes Of A Madman, directed by the late Deirdre O'Connell, founder of the Focus Theatre.
The Obies were set up in the 1950s to encourage the burgeoning off-Broadway theatre scene in New York. Notable Obie winners include Al Pacino, Kathy Bates, John Malkovich and Glenn Close; among the high-profile Irish winners are Fiona Shaw, Jim Norton and Marie Mullen.
"Sweet Bird Of Youth," he says wistfully, "is not Streetcar, but Chance Wayne has an eventual nobility or honour that Stanley Kowalski never possesses, and although the princess shares some of Blanche Dubois's weaknesses she is much more muscular and is by far the wittier of the two. I hope it finds the audience it deserves."
In a letter to Audrey Wood in 1939 Williams wrote: "I have only one major theme for my work, which is the destructive impact of society on the sensitive nonconformist individual."
McDonnell once saw Geraldine Page on the street. He lived in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, including, for a period, at the famed Chelsea Hotel. "I was on 23rd Street in Chelsea, a rain had just fallen and there was a mist over everything. Then I saw her, in a raincoat, sloshing deliberately through every puddle she saw. Here was this great actor in later years, out of her head, laughing like a five-year-old."
Page was renowned for choosing challenging, unconventional roles, and after eight nominations she finally won an Oscar for The Trip To Bountiful, two years before she died.
Williams's characters, says McDonnell, have the quality of flawed angels: deeply compromised but with the potential for wonderful humanity.
Sweet Bird Of Youth opens tomorrow at Liberty Hall Theatre in Dublin
