Time.news – A story of resurrection: this is how it was defined ‘The sweet wing of youth’ by Tennessee Williams, staged at the Teatro Quirino Vittorio Gassman in Rome, directed by Pier Luigi Pizzi.
The resurrection of a star on the sunset avenue – Alexandra del Lago, masterfully played by Elena Sofia Ricci – who finds comfort in alcohol, drugs and sex. Alongside her is Gabriele Anagni in the role of Chance Wayne, a young man looking for redemption who in his life has had more success as a gigolo than as an actor and whose fate will be opposite to that of the protagonist.
The play, on stage until February 12, was written by the Mississippi playwright in 1952 and ten years later the film of the same name was made with Paul Newman and Geraldine Page. Elena Sofia Ricci manages to capture all the facets of an actress on the edge of the abyss, her sharp irony and fear of loneliness and aging. The first scene is waking up together with thirty-year-old Chance Wayne in a Florida hotel room: from the intimate conversation of the two strangers emerge a woman fleeing life and the narcissism of a young man from the provinces.
The dominant theme is the transience of youth and success, the fading of beauty: “The enemy, time, in each of us,” as Chance states in the dramatic final scene. The “sweet wing of youth” will not be of help to the young man who together with Alexandra returns to his native country to win back his old flame, Heavenly. He will discover that her beloved was the victim of a gang rape that led her to sterility and her father opposes any rapprochement between them. No one will come to free him from the situation in which he has gotten himself. His fate is sealed and, unlike Alexandra’s, he will not suffer any reversal.