A striking view of human frailty

Virtually all of Tennessee Williams’ protagonists share the same psychic burden -- an unbridgeable gulf between the poetic longings of their fantasies and the unforgiving external reality that ultimately destroys them.

Williams’ best-known victims were women (“A Streetcar Named Desire’s” desperate Blanche DuBois, or fragile Laura Wingate in “The Glass Menagerie”). “The Night of the Iguana,” however, featured their riveting male counterpart in the Rev. Shannon, a defrocked Episcopal priest turned seedy tour guide. First presented in 1961, “Iguana” was Williams’ late career comeback play -- a return to razor-sharp eloquence after a period of personal and professional dissolution -- and autobiographical parallels float close to its surface.

A hard-hitting, elaborately staged revival at Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre makes few compromises despite the play’s large cast, sprawling set requirements and occasional structural impediments. To meet these challenges, the Rubicon pooled resources with Canada’s Manitoba Theatre Center for this co-production, which will play both venues.

Production values are a clear beneficiary of the partnership (in particular, Gary Wissmann’s expansive, two-story hotel set, sumptuously adorned in tropical foliage). The symbolically charged captive iguana referenced in the title is sadly reduced to a limp cloth-wrapped bundle, however.

Director James O’Neil brings the same precision and clarity to Williams’ language that distinguished his previous Rubicon stagings of “Streetcar” and “Glass Menagerie.” As a result, it’s deceptively easy to follow the characters’ journeys through a complex, often grueling psychological labyrinth.

Richard Eden’s haunted Shannon struggles to maintain his faltering grip on reality as he diverts his tour bus of Baptist schoolmarms to a rustic bohemian hotel on the Mexican coast, where he makes his last stand against his sexual and spiritual demons. From his fevered, agitated entrance, Eden telegraphs Shannon’s precarious condition in a performance that steers clear of smoldering menace in favor of more sympathetic torment -- perhaps a diplomatic choice for a character with a penchant for underage girls, but it comes at the price of some emotional range.

In any case, Shannon is a complete mess, which of course makes him irresistible to women. Vying for his affections are the hotel’s bawdy widowed proprietress, Maxine (Stephanie McNamara), a destitute spinsterish painter named Hannah (Stephanie Zimbalist), who shares Shannon’s difficulties in operating on the realistic level while living in the fantastic, and a teenage sexpot (Anne Ross) from the tour bus.

Providing superb comic relief are Laurel Lyle as the teen’s battle-ax guardian and Joseph Fuqua as a sleazy rival tour guide called in to liberate Shannon’s hostages.

One of the production’s charms is the pairing of Zimbalist with her father, stage and film veteran Efrem Zimbalist Jr., as Hannah’s grandfather, a frail, elderly poet. Their rapport is deeply touching and helps humanize a Hannah who would otherwise remain remote and untouchable -- even to Shannon, with whom she admittedly has a “sympathetic interest.”

The impossibility of their union is one of the play’s dramatic pillars, but there’s still latitude for him to make more inroads; a few moments where he pierces her armor would help make the prospect of Shannon’s pairing with Maxine more of a capitulation than a gratuitous happy ending, and Hannah’s ultimate isolation would seem all the more poignant.

*

‘The Night of the Iguana’

Where: Rubicon Theatre, 1006 E. Main St., Ventura

When: 2 and 7 p.m. Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays

Ends: Nov. 7

Price: $25-$47

Contact: (805) 667-2900 or www.rubicontheatre.org

Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes