Cast

Synopsis

Shannon, a minister defrocked for blasphemy and seduction, is now a travel guide in Mexico. Coping with a group of Baptist women furious because he has taken them all off the advertised route and slept with a girl in the party, he arrives at a ramshackle inn run by a brash and lusty proprietress. The confrontations among these ill assorted characters lead to Shannon’s final degradation.

Directors Notes

I couldn’t believe my luck when I was offered The Night of the Iguana, the prime play in the 2006 – 2007 season, but when I re-read it I couldn’t believe the enormity of the task I was taking on. Complex characters, most of them in crises largely of their own making, some speaking with a southern drawl, others with a genteel New England accent, Mexicans speaking Spanish, Germans speaking German – all these coming together in a run down Mexican hotel on a hilltop above a road on one side and above a beach on the other. The list of props is as long as your arm and the demands on lighting and sound (what does a panicking iguana sound like?) are unremitting throughout the play. Luck held good when I discovered I had an ideal cast who not only are first rate actors but who, bless them, have linguistic skills as well. Elizabeth Poynter volunteered her services to coach the Germans in speaking German convincingly, Bryan Bounds hales from Texas to coach the southern drawl and Spanish speakers as well, Liz Hall speaks Spanish and the Internet came to the rescue with the words and music for the German patriotic song dating from 1939. All I had left was to do justice to Tennessee Williams (he is very demanding), to make sense of the interplay of the characters, to move them about a bit and to find space for a hammock. All this becomes easy when you have lan Robinson, stage manager, to lean on.