In Tennessee Williams’s The Night of the Iguana, a defrocked clergyman encounters inside disturbances amid outside disturbances during one stormy night at the Costa Verde Hotel in Acapulco as the world prepares for World War II. After four women of different ages and backgrounds, along with a 97-year-old poet, engage in the clergyman’s spiritual struggles, their lives leap dramatically forward. And the catalytic, defrocked clergyman survives the night.
Mann’s production does best when, in the third act, Shannon and Hannah spend a dark night of the soul together sipping poppy tea after he’s had a breakdown. She describes her few brief and lonely sexual encounters with men, and he opens up more fully about his sense of spiritual abandonment. They also talk a lot, yes, about that trapped iguana. In the blue night light, surrounded by the rusted metal and creaky wood of Beowulf Borritt’s set, there’s an air of mutual confession and healing—two burnouts finding some kind of peace in the ashes. But where’s the immolation that got them there? There are two long acts before you hit that moment, and they are tough, slow going without a flame.
Two hours and fifty minutes. That’s all I knew about this production of the Tennessee Williams classic and I was prepared for a long sit. Not that there’s anything wrong with lengthy dramas but often the old plays could benefit from some surgical trimming. Well I’m very happy to say the La Femme Theatre Productions’ revival of The Night of the Iguana is an engrossing sit, beautifully acted under the direction of Emily Mann who mined every shred of nuance and wisdom embedded in this deeply felt work.
1961 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1976 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1988 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1996 | Broadway |
Broadway |
2017 | Regional (US) |
American Repertory Theater Regional Production Regional (US) |
2019 | West End |
West End Revival West End |
2023 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway Revival Production Off-Broadway |
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