Product Description

Part of the "Everyman" series which has been re-set with wide margins for notes and easy-to-read type. Each title includes a themed introduction by leading authorities on the subject, life-and-times chronology of the author, text summaries, annotated reading lists and selected criticism and notes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #467451 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 93 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780822208235
• Condition: USED - GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
New Directions publishes Tennessee Williams' (1911-1983) letters, short stories, poems, essays, and over sixty of his plays including The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Camino Real, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, and The Night of the Iguana.

Doug Wright is the author of I Am My Own Wife, which won the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize for best play of 2004, and the Obie Award-winning play Quills.

Customer Reviews

Williams' treatise on love and shame
"Night of the Iguana" is a Tennessee Williams play unlike any other. Set at a Mexican hotel in the early 1940's, the drama presents several character portraits of searing intensity. The minister Shannon -- tortured with self-loathing over his inability to control his sexual appetite -- has abandoned a tour bus he has been leading and has come to stay with an old friend, Maxine. Shannon is suffering a nervous breakdown, and it is only through the near-angelic presence of Hannah Jelkes, a visitor at Maxine's, that he is able to understand himself and the actions which have brought him to this state. While so many of Williams' characters (including Shannon) feel shamefully about love and sex, in Hannah Jelkes he has created a character entirely without shame. Hannah is Williams' ideal -- a person living living free of societal mores, who (like Blanche DuBois) is offended only by deliberate cruelty and unkindness. The third act, in particular, is transfiguring; had Williams written nothing else, this act alone would guarantee him his place among the greats.

May the Beast be Released.
The best play of Tennessee's late period, The Night of the Iguana features one of his best characters, in the shape of Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, a self-hating, sexually angst ridden, anti-reverend, for whom life is now breaking down, again.

Into the hidden Mexican hotel run by the America ex-pat Maxine comes Shannon, again to reconcile his life, where he meets the vagabond painter Hannah and her 97-years-young poet grandfather.

Shannon has been leading tours throughout the world over the years since his explosion at the pulpit propelled him out of the church's favor, and now he has abandoned a busload of Texas women who are fed up with his philandering and his off-the-beaten-path tactics.

All of the drama and trauma of classic Tennessee Williams is here. The tortured Reverend, at odds with God in such a cruel world. A man whose sexuality has been more detrimental than pleasurable. As well, there is Maxine, a middle aged widower, stuck or something like it in Mexico, running a cheap, rough and tumble hotel, far away from the nonsense of cities and America. Then, the spirited Hannah, who takes to Shannon as he to her, in a feeling out of hard hearts, and lonelinesses.

Better than most of his plays, The Night of the Iguana succeeds in it's treatment of lost souls, and the meeting of two people destined for loneliness and disappointment.

Then why do you read it?
The review under mine is ridiculous. This person obviously knows nothing about Tennessee Williams. And incidentally, I have no interest in his email address which he egomaniacally implies one should look for. The characters in this play are not hysterical (except Shannon once when he goes off the deep end, and that's not hysteria come to think of it). This is a beautiful, moving, perceptive and exceptional play. I won't give away the plot in case anyone wants to read it. Williams wrote lots of good and some great plays. This is a great one. I came upon this review (and the one under it which is just inaccurate, the reviewer apparently has a hard time grasping what he reads, if he read it) because I just saw the movie of this play and want to reread it again. I've read it many times, and I love it. I think (though I'm not sure) that Bette Davis played Maxine in the original production, and unlike Ava Gardner's (who was perfect in the part), her "Ha!" was (as is described in the stage directions) an explosion, and occurred frequently. One scene I will give away. Shannon tells Hannah about a place where the animals go to deficate. The place is so poor and the people are so hungry, that the people go through the dung looking for and eating bits of undigested food. Hannah goes behind a tree and throws up. That was left out of the movie. This is a very kind and gentle play. And emotionally (all the Williams' plays I've read are, he used to be a hero of mine, I've outgrown him, except for this gem) and intellectually (not so customary) deep. (That word "deep" will I hope turn you on, not off.) Oh. My email address isn't listed.