Directed by Walt Jones
The celebrated playwright of A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie, created Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, a Black Irish defrocked pastor, now tour guide, who arrives at a cheap cliff-side hotel near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with a group of women tourists. At the Costa Verde, managed by his friend and onetime lover, Maxine Faulk, Shannon struggles with delusions, depression, alcohol, and sexual attraction to an underage member of the tour party. Amidst this chaos, Hannah Jelkes, a spinster, appears with her ailing grandfather Nonno, who is composing his last poem. As Shannon tries to manage his tour party, who has turned against him for his unnatural relationship with the minor, he is “at the end of his rope,” just like the iguana kept tied by Maxine’s cabana boys. This classic masterpiece reveals the development of the deep bond between Jelkes and Shannon. The 1966 Academy Award® winning film, based on the stage play, starred Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, and Sue Lyon.
Click to read the Night of the Iguana Program.
Read more:
Inside the CSU Actors Studio: “The Night of the Iguana” by Mitch Wills
The Night of the Iguana Takes the Stage by Carrie Care