The Night of the Iguana is a stageplay written by American author Tennessee Williams. It premiered in Broadway in 1961, and was based on a 1948 short story by Williams. There have been two film adaptations made, including the Academy Award-winning 1964 film of the same name. Set in 1940s Mexico, the main character is an ex-minister turned tour guide, Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, who has been accused of statutory rape of a seductive sixteen-year-old in his party.
As leader of a tour party of church women, Shannon takes the group to a cheap hotel on the coast of Mexico run by an old friend of his named Fred. He soon finds out Fred has died and the hotel is now run by Fred's promiscuous widow, Maxine Faulk. Shannon, in the middle of a nervous breakdown, trying to manage both his tour party (who hate him) and Maxine (who is interested in him for purely carnal reasons), is struck by the appearance of the strangely virginal spinster, Hannah Jelkes, a painter who travels with her elderly poet grandfather. Hannah is at the end of her means and Shannon convinces Maxine to let her stay the night. Over a long night, and despite Maxine's attempts to separate them, Hannah and Shannon form a deeply human bond.
