A rare revival rises to the moment

The prospect of a revival of "The Night of the Iguana," a Tennessee Williams play rarely revived anymore, seemed like a luxury I wasn't sure I could afford in the ongoing political emergency.

- CHARLES McNULTY THEATER CRITIC

RILEY SHANAHAN, Dennis Dun and Jully Lee in "The Night of the Iguana" at Boston Court Pasadena.

But as the fine Boston Court Pasadena production, incisively directed by Jessica Kubzansky, bears out, Williams is the humane, humorously defiant playwright we need when authoritarianism is on the march.

"The Night of the Iguana" takes place in a sleepy, seaside Mexican village in 1940, just as Hitler's Germany was advancing on Europe and Japan was plotting similar jingoistic pursuits on its own front. Britain was already in flames, a fact celebrated by a vacationing Nazi family at the Costa Verde Hotel, the rundown bohemian guest house sitting on a wild hilltop overlooking the beach that provides the play's setting.

It's off-season, and Maxine (Julanne Chidi Hill), the lusty widow proprietor, is frolicking flirtatiously on her veranda with the hotel staff just as a troubled old friend, Lawrence Shannon (Riley Shanahan), turns up in a tumult of noise.

A mentally unbalanced reverend who was locked out of his church for committing the sins of fornication and heresy, he's been leading a bus tour of teachers from a Baptist female college through Mexico, and these uptight women are refusing to get off the bus.

One particularly indignant passenger, Judith Fellowes (Ann Noble), has accused Shannon of statutory rape. Charlotte Goodall (Isabella Feliciana), an underage girl under Miss Fellowes' watch, has fallen madly in love with Shannon and insists that he marry her after what happened between them in Mexico City.

Maxine can tell at a glance that Shannon is on the verge of another crackup. He's trying to lay off both the booze and the teenage girls, but his feverish condition spells trouble ahead.