Clive Owen has returned to the West End for the first time in 18 years to play the Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon in Tennessee Williams’ The Night Of The Iguana in a new production directed by James Macdonald. The production continues at the Noël Coward Theatre until 28 September 2019.
Also in the cast are Lia Williams as Hannah Jelkes, Anna Gunn as Maxine Faulk and Julian Glover as Nonno.
In the strange limbo of 1940, on a dilapidated hotel verandah perched high in a rainforest above the west coast of Mexico, a group of lost souls collide – a defrocked priest turned tourist guide, the grieving widow who runs the hotel, a family of jubilant Nazis… and an itinerant portrait artist with her 97 year old poet grandfather. The result is an epic battle between flesh and spirit, captivity and freedom, art and faith – heightened by the arrival of a tropical rain-storm.
So what did the Mates think of this production? To get an idea, read on.
Maryam Philpott: “Gripping performances from Clive Owen and Lia Williams, and Macdonald’s slow-burn direction allows Williams’ writing to cast its spell.”
Libby Purves: “Clive Owen is Shannon, returning to the London stage with no inconsiderable triumph, a masterfully crumpled white suit and a positively demonic level of energy.”
Anne Cox: “Tennessee Williams knew how to write about society’s underbelly. In The Night of the Iguana he throws together a disparate group of Life’s rejects just to see what happens.”
Aleks Sierz: “Despite the many laughs and comic passages, this is an essentially serious play for serious people. And it’s an emotionally generous production of a generous-spirited classic.”
Shanine Salmon: “The set from Rae Smith is stunning… It is one of the few productions that would look incredible on the screen as well as on the stage.”
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An editor, writer and critic, Lisa Martland is the founder of Vuelio top-ranked website
Musical Theatre Review which she set up in 2013. She has largely single-handedly developed it into one of the UK’s must-read sites for professionals and expert followers of the sector. In 2018, Lisa also joined the Terri Paddock Group, taking on the role of editor for both MyTheatreMates and our sister musical theatre site
Stage Faves. Formerly, she was deputy editor at The Stage Newspaper.
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