“Le Femme Theatre’s production of “ The Night of the Iguana” is the best rendition of this play that I have seen. Tennessee Williams’s masterpiece, if done poorly can be a long, drawn-out evening at the theater. There are several reasons why this “Iguana” is good, such as the exquisite sound by Darron L. West, the incredible lighting by Jeff Croiter, the deft costumes by Jennifer Von Mayrhauser and the direction by Emily Mann.
Williams, if not the best American playwright, is right up there with the Hemingways of the American literary world. He often brings out the utter desperation in his characters. In this play we have Lawrence Shannon (Tim Daly), a drunk who has been defrocked by his church, Maxine Faulk (Daphne Rubin-Vega), who has recently become a widow and Hannah Jelkes ( Jean Lichty), a wanderer who knows and accepts her downtrodden lifestyle. What makes Williams so eff ective as a writer like in many of his plays, he brings the characters to low depths as human beings, and often these people are mentally deranged. Then, he takes them to even lower depths to the point where the audience is shocked by the squealer, which is the life and the world that they live in.
Mann for the most part makes sure characters are interesting to the audience. “The Night of the Iguana” is three hours long and in this performance, Photo courtesy of Robert Massimi there were only two lulls in the show. For a short period in the fi rst act we had too much dialogue that went in circles between Daly and Vega; the same can be said for the second act between Daly and Lichty. Even with a bland scenic design (Beowulf Boritt), Mann kept us in this complex piece like a master.
As much as the cast is wonderful, it is Tim Daly as the reverend who wants to do good as he desperately fights off his inner demons (“the spook” as he calls it). He has a penchant for young girls and liquor, and both have gotten him in trouble time and time again. Daphne Rubin-Vega (Rent) yearns for the reverend and Lea Delaria, a Texas woman and leader for a vacationing Baptist Church tortures the already mentally weak Lawrence Shannon into continuing his tour guide which has gone array. The great Austin Pendleton plays Nonno, the oldest poet in America at 97 years old and Jean Lichty plays his granddaughter, who looks after him as they go country to country hustling her paintings and his poetry. I saw Lichty a few years back in another Williams play, “A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur,” at the Church at St. Clements in which she was also excellent. It is these fi ve core actors that along with Mann make this a worthwhile show to see!
