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PHOTOGRAPHY BY WILLIAM BURLINGHAM HOTTEST TICKET Jason Danieley and Carmen Cusack in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George. the passing time C hicago has seen its share of actors and directors heed the siren song of New York and Los Angeles, never to return. But despite the lure of Broadway and Hollywood, Chicago still has a hold on some of the best talent around, artists who—no matter how far they roam—are always happy to come home. David Cromer grew up in Skokie, where he exhibited "a certain thor- oughness" in the way he played with others, an insistence on having things done his way. "Looking back," he muses, "suggests that I wanted to do this job before I knew it was a job you could do." There's no doubt that directing is a job he can do. Beginning with his Jeff Award–winning production of Angels in America at The Journeymen Theater 66 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM in 1998, Cromer has AWARD-WINNING DIRECTORS DAVID CROMER AND GARY GRIFFIN TAKE ON SHOWS THAT SPEAK TO CREATIVITY, LOVE, AND THE TICKING CLOCK. BY THOMAS CONNORS demonstrated a keen ability to invest such chestnuts as Our Town with a freshness that seems almost audacious. Now a New York resident, the Obie winner—who acted in the Goodman Theatre's production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night in 2002—has returned to the venue, this time as a director, to offer his interpretation of Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth starring Diane Lane. The story of two struggling souls (Lane plays Alexandra Del Lago, an aging film star surrendering to drugs and drink, and Finn Wittrock, who recently appeared on Broadway in Mike Nichols's Tony Award–winning Death of a Salesman, is Chance, a hustler whose looks never got him very far), Sweet Bird of Youth is classic Williams: fevered, fraught, and filled with that