ACT ONE
| SCENE ONE: | A bedroom in the Royal Palms Hotel, somewhere on the Gulf Coast. |
| SCENE TWO: | The same. Later. |
ACT TWO
| SCENE ONE: | The terrace of Boss Finley’s house in St. Cloud. |
| SCENE TWO: | The cocktail lounge and Palm Garden of the Royal Palms Hotel. |
ACT THREE
The bedroom again. |
|
| TIME: | Modern, an Easter Sunday, from late morning till late night. |
| SETTING and “SPECIAL EFFECTS” | The stage is backed by a cyclorama that should give a poetic unity of mood to the several specific settings. There are nonrealistic projections on this “cyc,” the most important and constant being a grove of royal palm trees. There is nearly always a wind among these very tall palm trees, sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper, and sometimes it blends into a thematic music which will be identified, when it occurs, as “The Lament.” During the daytime scenes the cyclorama projection is a poetic abstraction of semitropical sea and sky in fair spring weather. At night it is the palm garden with its branches among the stars. The specific settings should be treated as freely and sparingly as the sets for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or Summer and Smoke. They’ll be described as you come to them in the script. |
Sweet Bird of Youth was presented at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York on March 10, 1959, by Cheryl Crawford. It was directed by Elia Kazan; the stage settings and lighting were by Jo Mielziner, the costumes by Anna Hill Johnstone, and the music by Paul Bowles; production stage manager, David Pardoll. The cast was as follows:
| CHANCE WAYNE | Paul Newman |
| THE PRINCESS | |
| KOSMONOPOLIS | Geraldine Page |
| FLY | Milton J. Williams |
| MAID | Patricia Ripley |
| GEORGE SCUDDER | Logan Ramsey |
| HATCHER | John Napier |
| BOSS FINLEY | Sidney Blackmer |
| TOM JUNIOR | Rip Torn |
| AUNT NONNIE | Martine Bartlett |
| HEAVENLY FINLEY | Diana Hyland |
| CHARLES | Earl Sydnor |
| STUFF | Bruce Dern |
| MISS LUCY | Madeleine Sherwood |
| THE HECKLER | Charles Tyner |
| VIOLET | Monica May |
| EDNA | Hilda Brawner |
| SCOTTY | Charles McDaniel |
| BUD | Jim Jeter |
| MEN IN BAR | Duke Farley, |
| Ron Harper, | |
| Kenneth Blake | |
| PAGE | Glenn Stensel |