The Night of the Iguana

The Night of the Iguana, a play by Tennessee Williams, debuted on Broadway in 1961 and went on to run for a respectable 316 performances. It was also nominated for the Best Play Tony Award and marked Williams’s fourth New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award win for Best American Play. The play was first adapted from some elements of a short story by the same title, which Williams published in 1948 as part of a collection entitled One Arm and Other Stories. The first iteration of the play was a one-act, mounted in 1959, which Williams revised into a two-act play in 1959 and finally a three-act play in 1961.

Some scholars consider The Night of the Iguana to be the last of Williams’s five most famous and successful works, a list that also includes The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). (Streetcar and Cat both won Pulitzer Prizes for Drama.) Of these five plays, The Night of the Iguana is unique in its departure from Williams’s usual setting in the American South; instead, the play investigates the themes of fading youth, mental health conditions, memory, and the wistful desires of lonely people. Set in a run-down coastal hotel in Mexico, the play contains autobiographical elements, but unlike the poetic devastation wrought in Williams’s other major plays, The Night of the Iguana ends on a hopeful note. In 1964, a highly successful film adaptation was released starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr. It received multiple Oscar and Golden Globe nominations and won the Oscar for Best Costume Design.

This guide refers to the version of the play printed in the collection entitled Tennessee Williams: Plays 1957-1980, which was published in 2000 by The Library of America. This version of the play is performed in three acts.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of death, self-harm, intimate partner abuse, statutory rape, and religious abuse. The source text also features antiquated language regarding race and ethnicity.

Plot Summary

In the summer of 1940, seasoned tour guide (and former minister) Lawrence Shannon has brought a particularly troublesome bus full of women to the off-itinerary Mexican seaside hotel owned by the recently widowed Maxine Faulk, where he is a habitual guest. Maxine is pleased to see Shannon, who is suffering from a high fever and has taken the tour bus key, refusing to let the driver or his charges bully him into leaving the less-than-lush accommodations. The women are after Shannon’s blood after he apparently had sex with the almost 17-year-old Charlotte Goodall, who has since been crying in the back of the bus. Charlotte is a singing prodigy accompanied by her chaperone, a masculine woman named Judy Fellowes, who is determined to see Shannon punished and unemployed. As Maxine attempts to deal with the irate group, a woman named Hannah Jelkes, who is about 40, arrives to inquire about available rooms for herself and Nonno, her 97-year-old grandfather. Shannon reassures Hannah that the hotel has enough space. When Hannah returns, having pushed Nonno’s wheelchair up the steep, jungled hill, Maxine is less welcoming. Hannah admits that they have no money, but because Hannah is a painter and Nonno is a poet, they will quickly make money on their art. Maxine allows them to stay for one night, but tomorrow she will send them to a boardinghouse that takes charity cases.

Maxine, who is clearly attracted to Shannon, wants to be rid of Hannah, whom she sees as a rival for his attentions. Maxine tries repeatedly to ply Shannon with rum-cocos, a drink served in a coconut shell, but Shannon refuses to drink liquor. Charlotte comes after Shannon, who attempts unsuccessfully to hide, and demands that he marry her. Shannon refuses, and Miss Fellowes arrives to take Charlotte away. Shannon appears, now dressed in minister garb to prove that he wasn’t defrocked, as Miss Fellowes accused. As Hannah sketches his portrait, he explains that he was simply locked out of his church after having sex with a young Sunday school teacher. Meanwhile, the young Mexican men who work for Maxine have captured an iguana, which they tie up so that they can fatten it before eating it. Meanwhile, Nonno, whose sight and hearing are fading along with his memory, is trying to write his final poem. When Hannah offers Shannon one of her last cigarettes, Shannon is moved by her kindness. A storm moves in on the hotel. Later, Shannon pens a letter to the bishop to declare his intentions to return to the church, but Maxine doubts that he will actually do this. Another tour guide enters to tell Shannon that he is there to take over the tour. Shannon resists, wild-eyed, but the guide leaves with the bus of women.

Maxine, who has seen Shannon through mental health crises in the past, ties him to the hammock and threatens to send him for another stint at a psychiatric hospital if he cannot regain control. Hannah sits with him and makes poppy tea to help him relax and to allow herself and Nonno to sleep well. Eventually, Shannon escapes the ties, and Hannah admits that she has also experienced a mental health crisis and had to force herself to keep it together. She offers another cup of tea, and Shannon drinks it with the caveat that Hannah will, in return, tell him about her limited sexual experience. Shannon suggests that the two of them travel together, but she declines, and she also refuses to Shannon’s physical advances. Shannon gives Hannah his gold cross to sell, and she reluctantly takes it. Hannah, disturbed by the sound of the tied-up iguana trying to get free, convinces Shannon to release it. Nonno, ecstatic, tells Hannah that he has finally completed his poem. He recites it for her, and she writes it down, promising to send it in for publication in the morning and leaving him to rest. When Shannon reenters, he finds Maxine and admits to freeing the iguana. Maxine asks him to stay and help run the hotel. Finally accepting a rum-coco, he agrees, and they exit together. Hannah returns to her grandfather to discover that he has died.