With time in my travel schedule for just one West End play (plus an afternoon performance at Shakespeare's Globe), imagine my delight when Clive Owen popped up on my play search newly staring as a suitably disheveled the Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon in a summer opening of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana, joined by a cast including the super talented Anna Gunn (Skyler White of Breaking Bad fame), Lia Williams and Julian Glover? Everyone has a heart-throb actor, or should have and Clive is mine! Though I've seen him in theater in a Pinter Play on Broadway in New York, the last time he played London's West End was in the wake of 9/11.
The Night of the Iguana was first staged as an one-act play in 1959, before eventually settling on a three-act play in 1961. A film adaptation was released in 1964, starring Richard Burton as Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon. This is one of Williams' lesser known works, though it has been revived numerous times across the West End and Broadway, with actors including James Earl Jones, Eileen Atkins and Alfred Molina all having a The Night of the Iguana credit to their name. This new production includes a star-studded cast of a similar calibre and a terrific set design which transports audiences to the 1940s to meet a clergyman at a hotel in Mexico, who has recently been ousted from his religious circles for referring to God as a “delinquent”.
Facing an identity crisis, Owen is imperfectly convincing as the unbalanced reverend who takes on a new career as a tour guide. As the story unfolded, I learned a lot more about the other people at the hotel including the manager and a group of German tourists, especially when a torrential storm loomed over the area. Anna Gunn's Maxine, the hotel's widowed proprietor is no slouch on stage and Lia Williams was also great as the nomadic artist and granddaughter of a basically homeless nonagenarian poet, played by veteran English stage, tv and film actor and recipient of the Laurence Olivier Award, Julian Glover. There's a deep sadness surrounding the captivity and projected fate of the iguana on the one night that brings all the characters together and ultimately leaves them all forever altered.
Watching a play written pre-1960s that is so full on WITH political incorrectness was a bit flinch-worthy. A young German woman sitting to the left of me voiced her discomfort at Williams' portrayal of German tourists, prompting a brief discussion during the interval as to post Second World War attitudes and stereotyping. Similarly, The Reverend Shannon's backstory would blow up a Me-Too backlash if it were today.
Playing at the Noël Coward theatre, London, until September 28th, 2019.
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