news-record.com

GREENSBORO - With "The Night of the Iguana," director Preston Lane and his team at Triad Stage put me in a rare predicament. They put me in the position of having to ask myself which part is better about their play, the acting or the show's production values.

The only problem is, I still can't decide, as both were great.

The last of what critics consider to be Tennessee Williams' major plays, "Iguana" uses an oceanside resort in Mexico as the background for a three-car pileup of desperate lives: Mr. Shannon (Joseph Collins), a defrocked minister turned huckster tour guide who's had indiscretions; Hannah (Elisabeth Ritson), the granddaughter of an ailing poet who's had the exact opposite; and Maxine (Rosie McGuire), the hotel owner who's in love with the minister even though her husband died a few weeks ago. Mr. Shannon and Hannah fall in love with each other, too, which is unfortunate because neither seem to realize this in time.

And comic relief is provided by a quartet of vacationing Nazis.

Playing disgraced minister Mr. Shannon, Collins had no problem converting me into a believer. The role of a former Southern pastor at the end of his chain would have been an easy one to ham up, but Collins avoids this mistake by keeping his tension steady, and letting loose only during key moments of the play.

And Collins isn't alone - the cast of "Iguana" lacks a single weak link. Even smaller parts like the bus driver (Alex Amery) and choral teacher (Amy da Luz) get the attention one could only hope for with the leads of a different production.

As for the scenic design, it's obvious Triad Stage and designer Howard C. Jones spared no expense. The first thing audience members will notice upon entering the theater is a scale model of the muggy resort's front patio area replete with fog machines running full-tilt (the fog was so intense it triggered the smoke alarms before the play). The real show stopper, however, was the indoor rainstorm that concludes the first half of the show before intermission.

Lane's production is better than Williams' script probably deserved. At this point in his career, the playwright started to wear his symbols too close to his sleeve. The playwright used the characters in this play to constantly flaunt his comparison of mankind to an iguana tied to the end of the chain, but it lacks the wallop of, say, a cat resting on a hot tin roof ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof") or glass animals preserved in a box ("The Glass Menagerie"). The play is so hard up for a grand meaning of some sort that when one character considers the tropical locale of the show, he asks, "Does that signify something?"

But even if "The Night of the Iguana" wasn't one of the best plays Williams ever wrote, you could never accuse Triad Stage of treating it that way. Together, everyone involved gave this intimate character drama the power and grandeur of an epic.

Joe Scott is a freelance contributor.