About the work
The Night of the Iguana is a play by Tennessee Williams that premiered on 28 December 1961 at the Royale Theatre on Broadway, directed by Frank Corsaro, with Patrick O'Neal, Bette Davis and Margaret Leighton in the leading roles. Williams had developed the material from a 1948 short story through several one-act drafts before arriving at the full-length stage version.
Plot
Defrocked minister T. Lawrence Shannon is reduced to guiding a busload of American schoolteachers through Mexico, and his life comes to a head when the tour breaks down at a rundown hotel on the coast. The widowed innkeeper Maxine Faulk and the penniless itinerant painter Hannah Jelkes, travelling with her elderly poet grandfather, each pull at Shannon in different ways. An iguana tied beneath the veranda, straining against its rope, becomes an emblem for how trapped all three of them are in their own lives.
Cultural significance
Margaret Leighton won a Tony Award for her performance as Hannah Jelkes, and the play is generally regarded as Williams's last major Broadway success. John Huston's 1964 film version, with Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr, helped keep The Night of the Iguana among the most frequently revived of Williams's later plays.