Theatre of Tennessee Williams Volume IV: Sweet Bird of Youth, Period of Adjustment, Night of the Iguana

The Theatre of Tennessee Williams brings together in matching format the plays of one of America’s most persistently influential and innovative dramatists. Arranged in chronological order, this ongoing series includes the original cast listings and production notes for all full-length plays. Now available as a New Directions Paperbook, Volume IV contains a wonderfully diverse collection of Williams’s works. Sweet Bird of Youth (1959) is a dramatic study of a fading Hollywood actress, who tries to recapture her youth through a young drifter half her age. In a lighter mood, Period of Adjustment (1960) tells of the marital troubles of two “Middle American couples, a departure for the playwright who himself labeled it a ’serious comedy.’” The Night of the Iguana (1961), in sharp contrast, tells of human frailty and redemptive strength on the West Coast of Mexico.