Tennessee Williams was a playwright famous for such plays as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie and this one, The Night of the Iguana. I read The Glass Menagerie in high school and seem to remember liking it. I read Streetcar Named Desire earlier this year and really liked it a lot. As such, I thought I would like this one too, but I didn't.
The Night of the Iguana won some awards and earned lots of praise, but I just couldn't get into it. The story is about a disgraced preacher named Shannon who now gives tours after giving up church service. He is tightly wound and always seems on the verge of mental breakdown. I suppose readers are maybe supposed to sympathize or empathize with him, but I just found him kind of irritating.
In the play, he is touring a group of women around Mexico and takes them to stay at a resort run by an acquaintance of his, Maxine Faulk. The women do not like the appearance of the place and spend the majority of the play angry at Shannon and his disinterest in them. They are also upset because he had 'improper' relations with a young girl who is part of the tour.
At the resort, Shannon meets a woman named Hannah with whom he forms and instant and unexpected bond. Maxine, who wants Shannon's attention gets jealous and does not treat Hannah and her grandfather well.
That's pretty much of it. The play focuses on human suffering and the like, topics which can definitely make for good stories. But this play just didn't do it for me. I was unable to sympathize with the characters because I thought it was their own faults that their lives were they way they were. They were bondage in but they were the ones who'd put themselves there.
Despite my opinion of this play, I still consider Tennessee Williams to be a playwright of great talent, I would just recommended his other plays, especially A Streetcar Named Desire, before this one.
