Getting ‘Iguana’ back on its feet

Known for many things, celebrated American playwright Tennessee Williams often gets overlooked for one -- his 1961 opus “The Night of the Iguana.”

First emerging on Broadway in 1961, “Iguana” gave Williams his final critical and box-office success, before his dramatic talents devolved into a greater talent for alcohol and self-destruction. Intermittently performed since then, another of its mini-moments has arrived of late, with a Woody Harrelson-led revival in London, and a scattering of shows in the U.S. This weekend, it opens in Glendale, where the classical repertory company A Noise Within kicks off a four-week stint.

And it’s about time, according to Geoff Elliott, Noise’s co-artistic director. “It’s a masterful play, combining all the elements of Williams’ great works,” he says. “It’s got great tragedy, great pathos, a great deal of comedy, a very interesting situation and, of course, great conflict.”

Elliott also stars in the production, which centers on one very bad day for disgraced Southern minister turned soused Mexican tour guide T. Lawrence Shannon. “He’s tortured from the word go,” says Elliott. “He comes into the play really at the end of his rope and that rope only gets shorter and shorter.”

On the cusp of his umpteenth nervous breakdown, courtesy of his illicit affections for a young charge, Shannon maroons his most recent group of sightseers -- a gaggle of good Baptist women -- at a ramshackle little hotel on the Mexican coast. It’s a dive owned by Shannon’s good friend Fred, a steadfast buddy to the alcoholic fallen churchman and one of the few ever able to quiet Shannon’s demons. But alas, Shannon learns poor Fred has passed on, leaving his business in the hands of his sultry widow Maxine (Deborah Strang). Shannon must now spend the next 24 hours ricocheting among this carnal creature, Baptists both pious and amorous, and the wise and sorrowful tourist/virginal spinster Hannah Jelkes (Jill Hill) -- a layered and complicated character in her own right.

Tackling the multifaceted role -- of a man who charms, rages and submits -- “is a strange sort of twisted, perverted fun,” says Elliott. He found a comfort level in playing a fellow Southerner, he says. “I was raised in a very strict fundamentalist atmosphere. . . . The church means a great deal to Shannon, yet he’s completely disillusioned. I understand those things.”

A Noise Within veteran Michael Murray -- who teamed up with Elliott once before for their 2006 L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award-winning restaging of Eugene O’Neill’s “A Touch of the Poet” -- directs this production. Long a fan of American realism, Murray was delighted to get his hands on an underrated gem like “Iguana.”

“Williams has a very compassionate view of human beings trying to connect,” says Murray. Nowhere is that more apparent, he believes, than in “Iguana’s” epic final scene. As day stretches deep into the titular night, Shannon and Jelkes stage an emotional pas de deux. “In that scene, among characters all in different ways lonely and searching, these two people engage in a very complicated and touching reaching out to each other,” says the director -- a moment he sees as brilliantly poignant. It’s also here that Williams’ trademark, that poetically otherworldly quality that elevates his damaged souls, most strongly seeps in.

“The opportunity to work on this kind of material comes rarely,” says Murray.

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-- Mindy.Farabee@latimes.com

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‘THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA’

WHERE: A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale

WHEN: Opens 8 p.m. Sat.; runs 2 and 7 p.m. Sun., then no performances until 8 p.m. May 8-9, 2 and 8 p.m. May 10, 2 and 7 p.m. May 11. See website for complete listings. Ends May 25.

PRICE: $36-$40

INFO: (818) 240-0910, Ext. 1; www.anoisewithin.org