To call The
Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, the self-destructive protagonist of Tennessee
Williams' scorching 1961 drama, "The
Night Of The Iguana"
'pitiful' seems wholly inadequate in terms of fully describing his condition.
But, what other word can encompass the emotional response evoked by this
wretched wreck of a human being, feverishly clinging to the end of a fraying
rope of an existence, sweating out his disgust with the carnal predations of
women, with a religion bereft of awe and magnificence, and most importantly
with his own rapacious desires and increasing mental instability? Especially
when it becomes increasingly clear through the course of the play that Shannon
is a man who's personal standards are set so high that no one, not himself --
not even God -- can possibly live up to them. In this regard, there's little
doubt that he's a stand-in for his own creator, and in this, Williams' last
great play, given a sweltering rendition by director Jon Jory, all of the late playwright's pent-up
disaffection with the rampant cruelty of the world, and his own questioning of
his artistic powers comes into full focus.
Critics
frequently peg "Iguana" as the final part of a trilogy of Williams'
master stage works, along with "The Glass Menagerie", and "A
Streetcar Named Desire", all of which share certain loosely concealed
biographical elements pointing to their author's life-long internalized
conflicts over his own sexual identity, his at times morbid fascination with
physical and psychological violence, and his ongoing struggle to define both an
aesthetic and spiritual landscape in which his characters, and by extension
himself, can exist outside of society's narrow definitions of
"acceptable" morality. Despite frequent criticism of his latter works
("Orpheus Descending" and "Sweet Bird Of Youth" being
primary examples) as "immoral" and "degenerate", a few
insightful writers, such as the Norwegian author and essayist Jens Bjorneboe,
and British critic Kenneth Tynan, see instead an attempt by Williams to
subscribe to a higher sense of morality and humanism, in defense of those who
think and act differently from the accepted norms, who seek out a different way
of being, and who are inevitably destroyed by the great collective mass of society,
who in turn despise and fear whatever reminds them of their own sense of
suffering and isolation.
It is in fact
these two qualities that drive many of Williams' alter egos, including Shannon
(John Procaccino), the
dissipated ex-priest who shepherds a busload of Texas bible school teachers to
the decrepit Baja Coast resort where he periodically comes to crack up.
Fever-addled, hounded by the harridan leader of the group (a delightfully
bulldoggish Laura Kenny), and
pursued by a teenaged musical prodigy whom he has recently deflowered (Lada
Vishtak), he has strayed from his
employer's "published itinerary", and has instead taken his group far
off the beaten track, forcing them witness the immutable human suffering that
surrounds them, and to which they remain purposefully blind. Now, he quite
literally finds himself at the end of his rope, and his only desire is to
exorcise the "spook" of his own inconsolable guilt and self-loathing
at the atrocities his fellow humans inflict upon each other.
But, what he
staggers into at the Costa Verde Hotel is hardly what he expects: the old owner
has recently died, leaving his libidinous widow Maxine (Patricia Hedges) in charge. Meanwhile, a 97 year-old minor poet,
Jonathan Coffin (Clayton Corzatte),
and his artist granddaughter Hannah Jelkes (Suzanne Bouchard) have imposed themselves upon Maxine's grudging
hospitality (curiously, a family of atrocious pro-Nazi Germans have been
excised from the script), all of which sets up a series of confrontations that
will plunge Shannon further into madness, yet in the end offer him some hope of
redemption.
Jory's
production sucks us into the dank, sweltering world of Shannon's subconscious
at the outset. Paul Owen's
veranda setting depicts the Costa Verde as a rabbit's warren of collapsing
adobe and vine entangled arbors, symbolic of the character's shattered
emotional state. Michael Wellborn's
lighting scheme imbues the landscape with sunlight that at times reaches the
intensity of a broiling interrogation lamp, while alternately providing
relieving moments of cool moonlight presaging violent tropical thunderstorms,
embellished by Sound Designer Dominic Cody Kramers, who heightens the sense of malaise with the
ever-present buzzings and twitters of all manner of unseen fauna, while Edward
R. Murrow relays a first-person account of the London Blitz from a tinny radio
speaker. At the center of this natural and man-made dishabille lies Shannon's
adored hammock, a tiny oasis of sanity and solace surrounded by the sublime
implacability of the ever-encroaching jungle. The play is packed nearly to
overflowing with Williams' signature symbolism, and while the physical
environment certainly contributes to the heightened sense of allusion, it is
the characters themselves, most notably in the triad of Shannon, Hannah and
Maxine that understandably carry the brunt of the playwright's allegorical
arguments.
Procaccino
turns in one of his strongest performances in recent memory as the beleaguered
Shannon; even from halfway up the steep audience rake, one can feel the
poisoned sweat of fear and self-hate seeping from his pores like the by-product
of some malarial infestation. Bouchard in contrast invests Hannah with a
decidedly Zen-like acceptance of her state (prompted no doubt by Shannon's reference
to her as a "skinny, standing Buddha") that eerily counterpoints
Procaccino's gradual descent into mania; it’Äôs the serene demeanor of someone
who’Äôs been there herself. At the
same time her Hannah is clear-eyed enough to recognize within her elements of a
similarly predacious nature, one predicated not on sexual satisfaction, but on
simple survival. Their scenes, particularly in the second half of the play
seethe with sexual and intellectual tension, and despite a couple of
mis-blocked moments on Jory's part, they circle each other like wary,
adversarial creatures; one determined to offer salvation, the other equally
adamant in his belief that he is unworthy of such grace. And despite the stakes
involved, Jory and his cast mine the play for moments of sly, ironic humor
seldom seen in Williams' oeuvre.
Hodge's Maxine
proves less than the intellectual match for these two, but she and Jory have
wisely allow the character a gritty, down-to-earth sense of realism, rather
than portraying her as a sort of Earth Mother antithesis to Hannah's cool,
Selenic virginity. As a result, the two women avoid the trap of simply becoming
embattled aspects of some symbolic "Madonna-whore complex", and
instead define Shannon's prospects as being between a real, yet decidedly less-than-ideal
relationship, or one that offers an ethereal but ultimately unsatisfying
platonic experience. In the end, it's no great surprise which woman he chooses,
but it's equally clear he's made the right choice, and for once Williams leaves
his audience with a sense of hopefulness that perhaps Shannon, unlike most of
his protagonists, has something to look forward to in his future.
Corzatte's
doddering poet (a character based loosely on Williams' own grandfather) is a
poignant synthesis of artistic and spiritual influences that eventually point
Shannon on the path toward his own salvation. Although long past his prime, his
spirit seems young in comparison to Shannon's world-weariness, and Corzatte
gives the old man a spryness that, like a fading star burning off its last ergs
of energy, is directed with single-minded purpose, and despite his own fading
mental powers, toward completing his work, regardless of whether anyone will
gauge it as having been worth the effort. One can easily envision Williams
imagining himself in similar straits, and no doubt the play's final image
reflects his symbolic desire to complete his own life's work before his
impending demise.
"The
Night Of The Iguana" at its heart represents Williams not only at his
soul-searching best, but also at the apex of his lifetime of self-examination.
In the character of T. Lawrence Shannon he has brought his string of doubting,
conflicted and scarred protagonists to their ultimate conclusion: to a choice
between either succumbing to madness or accepting a redemption that can never
live up to expectation. Fortunately, this production more than lives up to our
expectations, displaying a depth of feeling, both humorous and sublimely
touching, that fully encompasses Williams' own soulful, at times maddening
search for peace and solace.