The Night of the Iguana
Premiering on Broadway in 1961, The Night of the Iguana is set in a small town on the Pacific coast of Mexico in 1940, as Williams writes, "The west coast of Mexico had not yet become the Las Vegas and Miami Beach of Mexico." The setting is a hotel, owned and operated by a blowzy woman called Maxine (she was played by Bette Davis and later Shelley Winters on Broadway, and by Ava Gardner in the film directed by John Huston).
The action begins with Shannon, a former Episcopalian priest, huffing and puffing his way up the hill to the hotel. He is a frequent visitor (it can be assumed that he and Maxine have a past) and has brought a busload of Baptist Texas women as part of a tour he is operating for a third-rate tour company. He is upending the schedule, and hears about it from Miss Fellowes, the scolding organizer of the tour. Shannon has also dallied with a teenage girl on the tour, something he has a weakness for.
Also staying at the hotel is Hannah Jelkes, a fortyish spinster who "suggests a Gothic cathedral image of a medieval saint, but animated." She travels the world with her grandfather, "97 years young," "the world's oldest poet," who is wheelchair bound, blind, and struggling to finish his last poem.
It is this mixture, plus a captured iguana that is tethered below the hotel's veranda, which will make for a wonderful play. The quality of Williams' output had started to wane, and this is perhaps his last great play, a sparklingly funny and haunting look at individuals who, like the iguana, are at the end of their rope.
The greatest creation here is Shannon (played by Patrick O'Neal on Broadway, Richard Burton in the film), the former priest. Why former? "Fornication and heresy...in the same week," he replies. Besides his predilection for underage girls, he took to the pulpit and denounced God as a "senile delinquent," and was subsequently committed to an institution.
Despite his ephebophilia, he is somehow drawn to Hannah, who holds her own, even when confronted with the fact that she has no money to pay for the hotel (she plans on selling her drawings to pay her way). It's as though he recognizes something of himself in her, of the lost soul within. She is also not immune to his charms, though not so much as a held hand is shared between them. He does ask her if she has had any sort of love life, and she responds by sharing two stories: when she was a teenager, a man put his hand on her knee in a movie theater, and much later an Australian salesman took her out in a boat and, after asking for a piece of clothing, masturbated, though she turned her back to him during the deed.
Hannah is in stark contrast to Maxine, who is earthy and wanton, and walks onstage with her blouse half undone after a tryst with her 20-year-old employee. She is recently widowed--her fisherman husband died after a hook cut his flesh and got infected--but she still has a strong libido. It's interesting that Davis created this role, as it's completely unflattering--Shannon tells her that tight pants are not her friend--while I can certainly see Winters in the part.
An added element is a German family staying at the hotel. Given that it's 1940, it's certainly Williams' way of allowing the world to slip into this jungle of lost souls, as the family sings Nazi marching songs and follows the Battle of Britain on the radio. They were cut from the film.
The metaphor of the iguana, which is caught and then tied up and fattened for eating, is a bit clunky, but not ineffective. The parallel between the lizard and Shannon is drawn when he pulls off the gold cross around his neck, freeing himself from the shackles of his past.
Finally, the old man completes his poem, Shannon frees the iguana and accepts an offer from Maxine. For a Williams play, it's a pretty happy ending.
Comments
Post a Comment