The New Directions paperback copy of Tennessee Williams' masterpiece The Night of the Iguana (1961) has lots of great extras. It includes Williams' 1948 short story on which the play is based. I was inspired to read the play after seeing John Huston's great film version with Ava Gardener and Richard Burton. This volume includes an introduction written by American playwright Doug Wright, William's essay about the play "A Summer of Discovery," and an essay by scholar Kenneth Holdich "Acts of Grace." One of the biggest differences between the play and the film was the exclusion of the Germans. I found it somewhat baffling to know that there were Nazis in Mexico circa 1940 and in Williams' essay he states that they were there when he was there writing-hence their inclusion in the play. The short story is quite different from the play as well, but one can see which elements Williams drew from it for his play. I think this play is certainly one of Williams' superior works.

Sweetly melancholic.

John Huston's 1964 adaptation of Tennessee Wiliams's Night of the Iguana is one of my dad's favorite films of all time, so I grew up knowing the characters: Reverend Larry Shannon, battling his demons after being locked out of his Episcopal church for having sex with a young Sunday-school teacher; Maxine Faulk (my hands-down favorite at the time), the crass, sexually omnivorous widow whose at whose hotel Shannon arrives, with twenty angry female Baptists in tow; the otherworldly spinster Hannah Jelkes and her 97-year-old grandfather, the oldest practicing poet in the world. I grew up knowing them, but, as my dad said when I mentioned that I was reading the play along with my "Non-Structured" blog pals, how much of these characters and their interactions can you really understand at the age of fifteen? It is, as he pointed out, an "adult" story, and not just because it involves themes of sexual desperation and sexual contemptShannon with his teenage girls; Maxine with her cabana boysthat adults usually keep from children. I think the thing I most failed to identify as a teenager is how worn down all three main characters are, and how that desperate exhaustion imbues their small acts of basic human kindness toward one another with a significance bordering on the heroic. I understood ennui (what teenager doesn't?), but I didn't understand the way that living under emotionally taxing conditions stops being glamorous pretty shortly and starts wearing away at a person's reserves. Luckily, I still can't empathize with the choice between starvation and the kindness of strangers, but I do understand being engaged in a seemingly endless emotional struggle, and how exhausting and panic-inducing that can be.I also had a much different perspective on the Charlotte/Shannon relationship than I do now. Watching the story unfold as a 15-year-old girl, Shannon's behavior doesn't read as predatory the way it can to an older viewer; my friends, after all, were all for dating "older men." But what I now think is interesting about Williams's portrayal of Shannon is that the Reverend's sexual exploits are not his real crime herein the playwright's eyes, I think, it's Shannon's cold treatment of these young girls after sleeping with them that exposes the real ugliness in his character. I think, as Williams sees it, Shannon squanders the chance to connect with another human, and that's his sin.HANNAH: [...:] The episode in the cold, inhuman hotel room, Mr. Shannon, for which you despise the lady almost as much as you despise yourself. Afterward you are so polite to the lady that I'm sure it must chill her to the bone, the scrupulous little attentions that you pay her in return for your little enjoyment of her. The gentleman-of-Virginia act that you put on for her, your noblesse oblige treatment of her...Oh no, Mr. Shannon, don't kid yourself that you ever travel with someone. You have always traveled alone except for your spook, as you call it.It's interesting that in the 1964 film, Huston chose to remove any discussion of this coldness on Shannon's part, which strikes me as so important in the original play. Perhaps the director felt that a habit of seducing underage women was enough of a barrier for Shannon, as a basically sympathetic character, to overcome. Another interesting change to Shannon's character in the Huston film is that his theology is completely transformed. In both versions, he objects to the "petulant old man" worshiped by his Virginia congregation. But Huston's Shannon is a sort of nascent hippie environmentalist: as he chases his parishioners out of his church, he speaks of "the God of loving kindness"; and in the scene where he is describing his "researches" to Hannah, he defines "man's inhumanity to God" in terms of polluted rivers and exploited natural resources. These are tropes that a theater audience would immediately understand and relate to. The theology of the original Shannon, on the other hand, is much more complex, and I've always found it difficult to understand. Here, for example, is how he defines his God to Hannah: SHANNON: It's going to storm tonighta terrific electrical storm. Then you will see the Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon's conception of God Almighty paying a visit to the world he created. I want to go back to the Church and preach the gospel of God as Lightning and Thunder...and also stray dogs vivisected and...and...and...[He points out suddenly toward the sea.:] That's him! There he is now! [He is pointing out at a blaze, a majestic apocalypse of gold light, shafting the sky as the sun drops into the Pacific.:] His oblivious majestyand here I am on this...dilapidated verandah of a cheap hotel, out of season, in a country caught and destroyed in its flesh and corrupted in its spirit by its gold-hungry conquistadors that bore the flag of the Inquisition along with the Cross of Christ.Much weirder, no? I can understand why Huston decided to alter Shannon into the more easily-understandable "loving kindness" variety of Christian. But what is he actually saying here? The "stray dogs vivisected" line suggests the idea that God is everywhere, even in the ugly parts of life, and it's wrong of the complacent Virginian congregants not to recognize that. But really, Shannon's recognition of God is no more universal than theirs. If they are only willing to see the divine in anodyne respectability, he only seems willing to recognize it at the most extreme margins of human experiencenot in a calm blue sky, but in a dramatic, stormy sunset; not in a pampered house pet, but in a vivisected stray dog. On the other hand, he sees God as "oblivious," unconcerned with the travails of humans. I have always had a hard time wrapping my head around this seeming contradiction: if we're dealing with an unconcerned, "clock-maker" type God, why would he be more manifest in some aspects of life than others? Perhaps Shannon feels that humans are most able to connect with God when they are, themselves, in extremity, and it takes Hannah's calm plea for compassion, for a recognition that all humans have their struggles and their shadows, to balance out his glamorization of the extreme:HANNAH: I have a strong feeling you will go back to the Church with this evidence you've been collecting, but when you do and it's a black Sunday morning, look out over the congregation, over the smug, complacent faces for a few old, very old faces, looking up at you, as you begin your sermon, with eyes like a piercing cry for something to still look up to, something to still believe in. And then I think you'll not shout what you say you shouted that black Sunday in Pleasant Valley, Virginia. I think you will throw away the violent, furious sermon, you'll toss it into the chancel, and talk about...no, maybe talk about...nothing...just...SHANNON: What?HANNAH: Lead them beside still waters because you know how badly they need the still waters, Mr. Shannon.Oddly, although I strongly relate to Hannah's philosophy of endurance and human compassion irrespective of God's existence, I find her the least compelling of the three in terms of her actual character, especially on the page. She seems at times just a pretext through which Williams can speak directly to the audience; whereas Shannon and Maxine both talk like real people, Hannah often sounds written to me. Deborah Kerr's performance does a lot to dispel that impression, but Richard Burton and Ava Gardner are still more human-seeming to watch.There are things in both versions of Night of the Iguana that walk a thin line between bothering and intriguing me: are the depictions of "butch" Judy Fellowes, for example, anti-lesbian misogyny, or an examination of how remaining closeted can cause a person to become cruel and vindictive? (Interestingly, tough-guy Huston actually added material that would favor the second hypothesis. It definitely surprises me that John Huston would be easier on closeted lesbians than Tennessee Williams!) The depictions of Maxine's cabana boys reflect a ridiculous level of casual racism, but it's unusual, especially for 1961, to see a mostly-sympathetic female extract unapologetic sexual enjoyment from men in the way male characters often make sexual use of women. Williams doesn't exactly congratulate Maxine (nor am I arguing that he should), but her employment of Pedro and Pancho is viewed as another desperate attempt at human contact in an alienated worldand Williams, like Hannah Jelkes, respects any attempt at survival that isn't cruel or childish. In any case, I'm glad to have revisited this old family favorite. I suspect my appreciation of it will continue to grow with time.

This is my second Tennessee Williams play, having read A Streetcar Named Desire a couple of years ago. I admit that its fortunate I didnt start with The Night of the Iguana as my introduction to the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, because my somewhat lukewarm reception of this may have steered me away from reading another. I was swept away by Streetcar the imagery, the New Orleans atmosphere and the tension between the characters. I felt almost as if I were a participant on that stage. This one didnt have the same effect. There was a large gap between me and the players; I was perhaps like one sitting in the back row of the theater with a bit of an obstructed view. The setting is the verandah of a somewhat worn-out hotel on the edge of a cliff on the Pacific coast of Mexico. It is 1940, and while the rest of the world is embroiled in the horrors of World War II, the characters here are experiencing their own form of personal suffering. The defrocked minister, Larry Shannon, is on the verge of a mental breakdown, while the hotels proprietress, Maxine, has just lost her husband. The penniless Hannah arrives with soon-to-be ninety-eight year old grandfather, Nonno. This pair evoked the most sympathy from me, and I did admire the rich descriptions of the two. "Hannah is remarkable-lookingethereal, almost ghostly. She suggests a Gothic cathedral image of a medieval saint, but animated. She could be thirty, she could be forty: she is totally feminine and yet androgynous-lookingalmost timeless." The wheelchair-bound Nonno: "He is a very old man but has a powerful voice for his age and always seems to be shouting something of importance. Nonno is a poet and a showman. There is a good kind of pride and he has it, carrying it like a banner wherever he goes." Hannah fears Nonno has very little time left in this world, and Nonno is determined to find inspiration to finish writing his first poem in twenty years. The last act was the redeeming point in the play. The interaction and dialogue between Larry Shannon and Hannah was absorbing. The themes of loneliness and a desire for human connections were depicted with skill and passion. I felt I had moved up from my back row seat to one center and front. The fate of the iguana, who earlier in the play was caught and tied by rope under the porch, failed to ignite any intense emotion, however, although I did manage to grasp the symbolism of the poor creature. This is one example of a play that I believe I could appreciate more fully had I watched rather than read it. Ive heard good things about the movie dramatization as well, so I might just give that a chance if ever I feel so inclined. "We all wind up with something or with someone, and if its someone instead of just something, were lucky, perhaps . . . unusually lucky."

For some reason, The Night of the Iguana felt very mediocre, uneven and disjointed in many spots. It just didnt seem to flow from scene to scene or from character line to character line. I felt like many of the characters were a bit too over the top and almost became sort of caricatures of who they were supposed to symbolize or represent, and this lessened the impact or theme that Williams was trying to project, or perhaps the message he was trying to bring forth. Being brash is a common trait that many Williams characters take on in his works, but here it is taken to a new level. In many scenes, it just seems like copious amounts of squabbles and bickering with little much in the way of profundity or depth. For that reason, many of the primary characters like Shannon and Maxine arent characters you can get invested in fully. However, I do think the play somewhat redeems itself in the final act. To me, the most redeeming part of the play is the latter stages of Act 3. One of the more important and most sympathetic characters, Hannah, and Shannon have a key exchange and dialogue that has a great sense of depth and really digs into the nature of Shannon and his conflicted self. I think this redeemed what was otherwise a rather lukewarm reading experience. Perhaps seeing a production of this might help to illustrate or depict this work better. In the end, I dont think The Night of the Iguana can compare to the likes of A Streetcar Named Desire or The Glass Menagerie.