[.ca] The Night of the Iguana (ISBN 0822208237)

Williams' treatise on love and shame:
"Night of the Iguana" is a Tennessee Williams play unlike any other. Set at a Mexican hotel in the early 1940's, the drama presents several character portraits of searing intensity. The minister Shannon -- tortured with self-loathing over his inability to control his sexual appetite -- has abandoned a tour bus he has been leading and has come to stay with an old friend, Maxine. Shannon is suffering a nervous breakdown, and it is only through the near-angelic presence of Hannah Jelkes, a visitor at Maxine's, that he is able to understand himself and the actions which have brought him to this state. While so many of Williams' characters (including Shannon) feel shamefully about love and sex, in Hannah Jelkes he has created a character entirely without shame. Hannah is Williams' ideal -- a person living living free of societal mores, who (like Blanche DuBois) is offended only by deliberate cruelty and unkindness. The third act, in particular, is transfiguring; had Williams written nothing else, this act alone would guarantee him his place among the greats.