A SAMUEL FRENCH, LTD. TITLE

The Night of the Iguana

Full-Length Play, Drama  /  6w, 8m

"An awesome and powerful new drama." — NY World Telegram & Sun

  • Cast Size
    Cast Size
    6w, 8m
  • Audience
    Target Audience
    Adult
Accolades
Accolades
  • 1962 Tony Award nomination for Best Play

Details

Summary
John McClain's outline of "Within the brokendown environs of a cheap Mexican resort hotel [Williams] has created a mood of pervading loneliness and despair as intrusive as the Equinoxial storm that stirs sudden lightning flashes and gushes through the tattered room. The desolation, the emptiness are in his people: the tough, sex-starved widow who runs the hotel; the neurotic, defrocked minister, and the gentle maiden lady from New England. Thrown together in this squalid setting their human needs become explicit, and from their conflicts comes the realization that life must be endured, and that the spirit will somehow survive even beyond the limits of anguish. Mr. Williams veers off in many philosophic directions in this searing pastorale, but he is chiefly concerned with the relationship of the Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon and Miss Hannah Jelkes, the sad, fortyish lady who travels the world with her grandfather ('the oldest practicing poet in the world'), painting quick portraits, for a fee, while the nonagenarian recites poetry to hotel guests. Rev. Shannon, having been relieved of his cloth for sexual irregularities, has landed at the Costa Verde hotel, near Acapulco, on the verge of one of his periodic mental breakdowns. The proprietress, an old friend, is prepared to offer him a bed and will, in fact, share it with him if he wishes. But then Miss Jelkes and her grandpa arrive, penniless but prepared to offer their services to the guests in return for lodging. There is a strange and immediate rapport between the discredited cleric and the lonely artist. The play's most poignant moments—scenes of enormous compassion—grow out of the understanding of these two people, their mutual need for companionship and roots, their final moments of nobility in small gestures of unselfishness to aid one another."
History

The Night of the Iguana premiered on Broadway at the Royale Theatre in December 1961 under the direction of Frank Corsaro.

PANCHO
MAXINE FAULK
PEDRO
THE REVEREND T. LAWRENCE SHANON
WOLFGANG
HILDA
HERR FAHRENKOPF
FRAU FAHRENKOPF
HANK
MISS JUDITH FELLOWES
HANAH JELKES
CHARLOTTE GOODALL
NONNO
JAKE LATTA
  • Time Period 1940s/WWII
  • Setting Sumer of 1940 in the Costa Verde Hotel in Puerto Barrio, on the west coast of Mexico.
  • Cautions
    • Mild Adult Themes

Media

REVIEWS

"An awesome and powerful new drama. —NY World Telegram & Sun

"…Williams' most mature work." —NY Daily News

"…the most fruitful and versatile exercise by our best living playwright." —NY Journal-American

"…Tennessee Williams at the top of his form." —The New York Times

Licensing & Materials

  • Minimum Fee: £70 per performance plus VAT when applicable.

    Please submit a license request to determine availability.

Scripts

Available Formats:

Authors

Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) explored passion with daring honesty and forged a poetic theatre of raw psychological insight that shattered conventional proprieties and transformed the American stage. The autobiographical The Glass Menagerie brought what Mr. Williams called “ ...
View full profile

Now Playing