Night of the Iguana

Review: Night of the Iguana

The play I saw was called “The Night of the Iguana”. The play was a reenactment of the original play, which was written by Tennessee Williams. Janice Akers who is a faculty member here at Emory directed this version of the play. The play took place at the MGM theater located in the DUC and it lasted just over three hours. The play was divided into three acts; the first being the afternoon of day, the second also being the afternoon but almost near the sunset and the last act was situated in the evening before and after dinner. The Night of the Iguana was a play about a day in the life of devout Christian, Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon. In the course of the play he had the role of a tour guide, who was taking a bus full of girls from a Christian school on a trip to a city on the coastline of Mexico. Many things take place during this night, which completely change the life of Shannon.

The first act was probably the hardest to grasp only because there were many things thrown at the audience at once. Most of the characters, expect for Blake, who was another tour operator who was sent by the company, were introduced in the first act, which is what threw me off my feet a little. The play starts with Shannon walking into Maxine’s hotel, with the rest of his tour group still standing by the bus. As the bus driver and then the supervisor, who represented the school, came to the scene, they were very angry. It seemed to me that the trip was a sort of scam because the supervisor was expecting the hotel to be much better that where they stayed and that is why she wanted to go back as soon as possible but it seemed that Shannon only came to meet Maxine. The story further develops when that supervisor finds out that Shannon slept with one of the girls on the tour.