Sweet Bird of Youth closes out an undeniably successful decade for Tennessee Williams, on stage and screen, and bisects his body of work, with his mature hits on one side and his experimental, often lambasted later plays on the other.
Although Kim Stanley’s big-screen appearances were rare—four major film roles, plus the uncredited narration in To Kill a Mockingbird—she was the leading lady of television drama’s “Golden Age.”
What we see here from Strasberg is frustratingly literal and drably conventional—it looks to me like he’s channeling a lot of received wisdom about how Chekhov should be staged and bringing almost nothing of his own to the process.
Sometimes when you find the club that will have you as a member, you do not easily give up your spot.
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