The Night of the Iguana

Really great theaters and their directors tend to select productions that inherently offer a commentary on the times. One of our favorite exercises is to figure out: Why this play? Why here and now? Well, we could hazard a few guesses as to why Joe Dowling has decided to stage Tennessee Williams’s most autobiographical play—and it may have something to do with a theater coming to grips with a kind of midlife crisis, on the eve of its controversial (and expensive) sojourn down to the river. Williams’s play is set in a Mexican seaside resort, and features a wayward and philandering minister wrestling, as they say, with his many ghosts. Ultimately, the play is a wrenchingly honest testament to the fact that wisdom might come with age, but wisdom also comes with a hefty dose of skepticism about some of life’s most fragile truths about God, faith, security, sexuality, and death. Guthrie Theater, 725 Vineland Pl., (612) 377-2224, www.guthrietheater.org