Seduced by ‘The Night of the Iguana’ : Cal State Fullerton Director Ranks the 1961 Play as Williams’ Best Effort

FULLERTON — Cal State Fullerton theater professor Gretchen Kanne slips past Tennessee Williams’ biggest hits when naming what she considers to be his greatest play.

“A Streetcar Named Desire”? “The Glass Menagerie”? Nope, keep going.

You can stop at “The Night of the Iguana,” his drama about a defrocked reverend with a taste for pubescent girls and self-destruction.

Kanne so admired the drama that she directed it in 1988 at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. The former New York stage and Hollywood actress still admires it, so much that she’s staging it again, at Cal State Fullerton, where she’s been teaching theater and directing for several years. The production opens tonight in the Arena Theatre.

“I wanted to come back to it because I just love it,” Kanne said. “It’s emotionally challenging, of course, to the audience, but it’s also emotionally challenging to our students.

“It’s a tough play to take [because of the provocative plot] but it has a lot of spirituality. It looks into the soul of the characters, and Williams brings his usual irony, humor and sarcasm.”

Kanne’s appreciation has been shared by many critics since the play premiered in New York City in 1961, but apparently it hasn’t generated much interest in Orange County over the intervening years. It has been produced infrequently in these parts and rarely in greater Los Angeles as well.

Kanne said she has at least a partial answer for why more theaters don’t tackle it. Besides its demanding story line, she believes it’s difficult for companies to find an actor capable of playing T. Lawrence Shannon, the priest-turned-tour bus driver who, after seducing a girl, settles into the seedy Costa Verde Hotel in Mexico and basically falls apart. Shannon finds hope, though, in Hannah Jelkes, a demure artist who tries to put him back together.

“It’s such a difficult role. Shannon is kind of like a male Blanche Du Bois,” Kanne explained. “The actor [who plays him] has to have the talent to absorb life’s experiences and then express it later. Fortunately, I have a very good actor playing him.”

Her Shannon is Todd Crabtree, a student in his mid-20s who spent a few years in the Marines. Kanne said his experiences in the service “were obviously dramatic” and helped prepare him for the role. “He’s also just a strong natural talent,” she added.

*

Most people may be familiar with “Iguana” through the 1964 movie starring Richard Burton as Shannon. It was directed by John Huston and featured Sue Lyon, Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner.

Kanne said she studied the movie before staging the Edinburgh production and decided it was only so-so. She thought Burton was especially miscast as the priest.

“Burton was just too successful, too recognizable as an actor, too much of a personality,” she said. “There were some things that were charming [about the movie], but it didn’t have the power of the staged play. On stage, you feel the intensity of real human beings struggling.”

Kanne considers herself fortunate to have seen the play’s premiere production in New York. That staging had Patrick O’Neal as Shannon and Bette Davis as Maxine, the earthy owner of the Costa Verde, the role played by Gardner in the film. It was a “wonderful” production, she said, one that ignited her passion for the drama.

Despite her years in New York, Kanne never acted in “Iguana.” She has several other credits, though, including playing Hecuba in a Circle in the Square production of “The Trojan Women” and Calpurnia in Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival staging of “Julius Caesar.” She has also appeared in movies and television, including Mel Brooks’ “The Producers,” and had a small recurring role in “Welcome Back, Kotter.”

Kanne sometimes misses acting, but teaching--and directing--at Cal State Fullerton are as satisfying, she said. For one thing, she’s been able to indulge her love of Williams by staging two of his other plays (“Summer and Smoke” and “Streetcar”) at the campus in recent years.

Her productions are just a few of the examples of the school’s commitment to Williams. Besides the better-known dramas, the theater department has produced “Kingdom of Earth” and “Small Craft Warnings.”

“I’m not sure it’s a conscious decision [to do Williams], but it looks like it turned out that way,” Kanne said. “He’s always relevant. . . . The human heart and our needs and desires are always paramount; that’s what he is about.”

* Cal State Fullerton’s production of Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana” opens tonight at 8 p.m. at the campus’ Arena Theatre, 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton. Performances Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturdays (except Oct. 7) at 2:30 p.m.; and Sundays at 5 p.m. Through Oct. 22. $6 and $8. (714) 773-3371.