19th - 23rd June at 7.30pm with a 2pm matinee on Saturday 23rd
'Fast decay is a thing of hot climates, steamy, hot, wet climates and I run back to them like an - incomplete sentence.' (Shannon, Act 2)
Set in 1940 in the shabby, run-down Costa Verde Hotel The Night of the Iguana is recognised as Tennessee Williams’ last great play. The hotel, surrounded by the simmering heat of the Mexican jungle, plays host to the flotsam and jetsam of passing tourists and is run by, the recently widowed, Maxine Faulk and her ragbag selection of staff. Into this steaming backwater comes the Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, an ex-minister now earning a living as a tour guide for a second-rate travel agency. The widow sees in Shannon an easy and desirable replacement for her deceased husband, and starts to entrap him just as new travellers arrive at the hotel in the shape of Hannah Jelkes and her aged grandfather, Nonno.
As the night unfolds and Shannon’s plight comes to resemble that of the captive iguana, trapped, bound and tormented under the hotel’s veranda. Hannah enters in to a deeply human bond with the ex-priest - and the heat in the jungle increases.
Don’t miss a rare opportunity to see this Williams’ classic performed by a stellar Next Stage cast headed by Richard Matthews as Shannon.
