'The Night of the Iguana'
By Don Shirley
The last of Tennessee Williams’s great plays salutes the humanity of life’s also-rans, just as they’re running out of options in a seductive outpost on the Mexican Pacific coast. None of them has given up yet – witness the anguished desperation of Geoff Elliott’s ex-Rev. Shannon, the powerful lunge for sensual consolation by Deborah Strang’s recently widowed Maxine, and the hardy persistence of Jill Hill’s spinster Hannah Jelkes, who’s accompanied by her nonagenarian grandfather (Evidence Room regular Tom Fitzpatrick in a crystalline A Noise Within debut). In contrast to L.A.’s last noteworthy Iguana revival, director Michael Murray’s impeccable staging restores the subsidiary characters of a trio of German tourists, who cheer from afar as London burns (it’s 1940). They offer an oblique commentary on Hannah’s credo that nothing human disgusts her – unless it’s violent or unkind.
A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale, (818) 240-0910 x1. Anoisewithin.org. Call for performance schedule. Closes May 25.
Published: 04/30/2008
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