The Night of the Iguana

The Night of the Iguana is a stageplay written by American author Tennessee Williams. Based on Williams' 1948 short story, the play premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made, including the Academy Award-winning 1964 film of the same name.

Plot

In 1940s Mexico, an ex-minister, Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, has been locked out of his church after characterizing the Occidental image of God as a "senile delinquent," during one of his sermons. Shannon is not de-frocked, but rather institutionalized for a "nervous breakdown."

Some time after his release, Rev. Shannon obtains employment as a tour guide for a second-rate travel agency. Shortly before the opening of the play, Shannon is accused of having committed a statutory rape of a sixteen-year old girl, named Charlotte Goodall, who is accompanying his current group of tourists.

As the curtain rises, Shannon is arriving with a group of women at a cheap hotel on the coast of Mexico that had been managed by his friends Fred and Maxine. The former has recently died, and Maxine Faulk has assumed sole responsibility for managing the establishment.

Shannon, in the middle of another nervous breakdown, tries to manage not only his tour party, who have turned against him for entering into sexual relations with the minor, but also Maxine, who is interested in him for purely carnal reasons. Adding to this chaotic scenario, a strangely virginal spinster, Hannah Jelkes, appears with her moribund grandfather, Nonno, who, despite his severe "decrepitude", is in the midst of composing his last poem.

Hannah, who barely scrapes by as traveling painter and sketch artist, soon finds herself at the end of her rope, that is to say, at Maxine's mercy. Shannon, who wields considerable influence over Maxine, offers Hannah shelter for the night. The play's main axis is the development of the deeply human bond between Hannah and Shannon, whose names even resemble each other.

Like the Iguana, captured and tied to a pole by the Mexicans in the play, they have come to the end of their rope. This metaphor is intensified when Shannon tears at his golden cross on his neck, lacerating himself, as if to free himself from its constraints.

Minor characters in the play include: a), a group of German tourists whose Nazi marching songs paradoxically function to lighten the heavier themes of the play, and yet cast us deeper into human suffering as they remind us of the horrors of World War II, b) the Mexican "boys" Maxine employs to help run the hotel who comically ignore her laconic commands, c) and Judith Fellowes, the "butch" vocal teacher charged with Charlotte's care during the trip. The latter is one of Williams few overtly lesbian characters (see A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur by Williams, in which a love triangle among three women is the play's sole interest).

Original Broadway stage production

The play premiered on Broadway at the Royale Theatre on December 28, 1961, and ran for 316 performances. It starred Patrick O'Neal as Rev. Shannon, two-time Oscar winner Bette Davis as Maxine and Margaret Leighton as Hannah. Competitive strife was reported during the production. It may have been that Davis' role as the swaggering Maxine failed, understandably, to register as powerfully as Hannah, a role imbued with Williams' talent for luminous poetry. It may have been, as Davis let on, that Leighton and O'Neal sought to upstage or undercut Bette's work in the play. Davis left the production after four months and was replaced by Shelley Winters.

Davis' role was Maxine, a lusty life-force of a woman, with some good comic lines, who is offstage for a significant part of the play, while Hannah is on. Hannah is a role along the lines of Williams' greatest female characters, like Blanche DuBois and Summer and Smoke's Alma Winemuller, women possessed of extraordinarily refined sensibilities and grace. But Hannah may be viewed, for her intrinsic strength of character, as a departure for Williams. In this play, Hannah, a single woman in service to others, serves as an inspiration to Shannon for her inner strength, a strength ultimately denied the like-minded Blanche and Alma in their plays. The play also featured Alan Webb as the dying grandfather to whom Hannah has devoted herself, Louis Guss, Bruce Glover and James Farentino. The production was directed by Frank Corsaro (although, as reported in the Bette Davis biography "Dark Victory," Davis banned Corsaro from rehearsals at some point late in the game). Nonetheless, the play was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. Leighton, as Hannah, won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.

Film versions

The 1964 film version was directed by John Huston and starred Richard Burton as Rev. Shannon, Ava Gardner as Maxine and Deborah Kerr as Hannah. It also featured Sue Lyon, Cyril Delevanti, Grayson Hall (who received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance) and Barbara Joyce (later an acclaimed artist). The screenplay was written by Huston and Anthony Veiller.

The film won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design (B&W), and in addition to Ms. Hall's nomination, was also nominated for Cinematography (by Gabriel Figueroa) and for Art Direction. The film removed the Nazi tourist characters from the original stage version.

There was a 2000 Serbo-Croatian film version that was directed by Janusz Kica.

More stage productions

A 1976 Broadway revival at the Circle in the Square Theatre featured Richard Chamberlain as Rev. Shannon, Dorothy McGuire as Hannah and Sylvia Miles as Maxine. The Circle in the Square Theatre also staged a 1988 revival starring Nicolas Surovy as Rev. Shannon, Maria Tucci as Maxine and Jane Alexander as Hannah.

In 1996, a Broadway revival was directed by Robert Falls featuring William Petersen as Rev. Shannon, Marsha Mason as Maxine and Cherry Jones as Hannah. This was based on a 1994 production staged by the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

In London, a 1992 production at the Royal National Theatre featured performances by Alfred Molina as Rev. Shannon and Eileen Atkins as Hannah. This production was directed by Richard Eyre.

A critically acclaimed 2006 London production at Lyric Theatre starred Woody Harrelson as Rev. Shannon, Clare Higgins as Maxine and Jenny Seagrove as Hannah.

Music

The Night of the Iguana is also the title of a song by Joni Mitchell from her 2007 album, Shine. It is a thematic and lyrical adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play.