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.
The piercing poetry of Williams’ words flickers into life many times, but also feel missed and blurred. Nonno’s poem, as it is finally delivered—about an olive branch observing the sky—feels underwhelming, rather than a profound underline. Williams may have known or imagined a way to crystallize The Night of the Iguana into knowability—but this almost 3-hour production feels lost, even as its actors valiantly attempt to do the same.
Daly’s Shannon is competent, but his jittery gruffness doesn’t leave enough room for sympathy, and it’s not exactly crazed enough to insert a sense of exciting theatricality in the midst of the more human (and maybe more banal) crisis of faith and sanity. Lichty’s Hannah, in comparison, is soft, gentle, perhaps prudish. She is supposed to be tender where Shannon is prickly, serene where he is sweaty. But her dramatic dilemma — her loneliness and the way in which her clear-eyed belief in connection contrasts with Shannon’s failure of faith — feel a bit undercooked. Her performance is reminiscent of Mia Farrow in Woody Allen movies, with the timbre of Jane Fonda’s voice, but without the forcefulness. Between the pair, there isn’t enough thrust, even if it’s to get through the evening with one’s scruples or heart intact.
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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