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Gifts from The Morning Star
The Night of The Iguana, Noel Coward Theatre, London
Production of a Tennessee Williams play doesn't live up to its promise
In disgrace: Clive Owen as Reverend Shannon [Brinkhoff Moegenburg]

HEAVILY influenced by a summer Tennessee Williams spent in Tahiti in 1940, The Night of The Iguana is an odd mixture of elements.

It’s like a jigsaw puzzle whose striking individual pieces are all present but, assembled as a whole, fails to live up to expectations.

Rae Smith’s tropical set — a Mexican hotel that’s little more than a few corrugated shacks overlooking the sea adjoining an imposing rock face — is the faintly allegorical setting for a diverse group of people who, breaking or ending their journeys, deliberate on and remonstrate about their lives.

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