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Regional Reviews: St. Louis Night of the Iguana Also see Richard's review of Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe
This Shannon has an unexpected skittishness to him. But gradually you realize Mr. Alderson's verbal half-stumbles are roughly even and (in their own way) rhythmic: as if he were a cicada jittering out of its carapace for one desperate fling. And then his lines come out more smoothly after he "takes to drink in the second act." Till then, he's jonesing for something (underage girls or an over-aged deity) that makes him irresistible to the two women vying for his affections. And, either way, that slightly herky-jerky rhythm of speech adds a bracing new layer of insanity to this Shannon, a defrocked minister. A layer of unpredictability. It's as if the actor were intentionally jittering a feather along the balloon of our souls, and we cringe a bit till the eventual electrical discharge. This Night of the Iguana also feels like skid row in a Mexican coastal paradise: set at a vine-covered hotel in the jungle, near a village very much like an undiscovered Puerto Vallarta circa 1940–lovely, by set designer Andrew Cary. Everybody's down to their last peso at a pensione run by a young widow, Maxine (the earthy and wry Jessica Johns Kelly), who's suddenly mired in debt. In their reduced circumstances, she and Shannon get regular laughs in act one. In this case, with a very assured and encouraging director, it may be Williams' funniest play. The "other woman" is a lovely, itinerant artist, Hannah Jelkes (the "real and fantastic" Deborah Roby), lugging her over-aged grandfather (spry and endearing Jim Danek) around the world with her. In Williams' story (done here in two acts, over two and a half quick-paced hours), a lovers' triangle is stripped bare. And, where Ms. Kelly's Maxine knows everything about the "real" Shannon, Ms. Roby's Hannah intuitively seems to know everything "fantastic" about him. Two non-theatre friends of mine separately concluded that Night of the Iguana must be a horror story, at least based on its title alone. And in a way it is: everyone's trapped and chaos is closing in. Near the end, Mr. Alderson, as Shannon, gradually seems to be circling a drain of failure in a hammock that seems to want to devour him alive, like some dry, carnivorous plant. But I suspect that four out of five dentists would probably agree that the "iguana" here is really a metaphor for something prehistoric in our own natures, that's tied up and tormented by the very familiar, very punitive side of our (usually feminized, in Williams) pretensions of civilization, which surface antagonistically in the playwright's work. Filling that "civilized" side of the equation here, Ann Egenriether is starchy and very nicely upscale as Miss Judith Fellowes, leading a tour of Texas Baptist women through Mexico. Triggering Judith's wrath is Kelsey Belt, urgent and beguiled as Charlotte, a sixteen-year-old who has fallen in love with Shannon in his work as a tour guide. There's only one way it can all end. But it's almost impossible to see it coming until the final moments of this very admirable production. And, for Williams, that is a "happily ever after." Night of the Iguana runs through October 27, 2024, at Washington University (the former CBC prep school), South Campus, 6501 Clayton Road, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.placeseveryone.org. Cast: Production Staff: |
