STAGESweet Bird Of Youth
Old Vic
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Kim Cattrall shows her star quality in a flawed but rumbustious adaptation of Tennessee Williams' study of love, loss and hope.
REVIEW
One of the many challenges presented by Tennessee Williams' elegy is to keep the character of ageing movie star Alexandra Del Lago away from the precipice.
She stares over the edge into pure melodrama (at best) and ridiculous, irritating caricature (at worst).
The combination of drunken vanities, whimsical cruelties and depthless self-pity evokes any of the legendary Hollywood divas who storm and wail at will.
That Kim Cattrall lassoes and wrangles this sprawling monster to the ground and presents her as a recognisable human being is remarkable.
With a flick of a padded shoulder, she is grande dame and then, she melts, pitiably, into a pool of bitter, needy tears.
But this is mostly the story of the handsome gigolo she contracts to boost her ego after an apparent film flop.
Chance Wayne has good looks and a meal ticket and he takes both back to his home town of St Cloud to show his contemporaries he's made something of himself.
But an ill-advised and distinctly grubby coupling with Boss Finlay's virginal daughter, Heavenly, years before has left the town keen on Shakespearean revenge.
Chance is at first a vain hustler but latterly reveals himself to be a man of passion, self-pity and regret. Del Lago takes a similar journey in different cycles, meaning their encounters are never less than freighted.
So if Del Lago is one of the challenges, what are the others in Marianne Elliott's striking interpretation of the 1959 play?
The plot is improbable; the characters are blustery and, in some cases overblown (Finlay's mistress Miss Lucy a case in point); Del Lago is put on hold for long stretches; and the drama is pitched at such a register that lightning cracks accompany the cliffhangers.
And, crucially, when the action expands to include Boss Finlay's politics and the vengeful folk of St Cloud, the story becomes looser, broader and more predictable.
Williams created the piece from two separate plays and the crude stitch job shows.
Fortunately, one of those plays - the tense scenes between Del Lago and Chance (a mercurial and effective turn by Seth Numrich), swapping stories of love, loss and hopelessness, and trying to outdo each other in a waspish fight for survival - emerges unscathed and is worth the ticket price alone.
Until Aug 31, go to oldvictheatre.com.
