MET’s The Night of the Iguana is more than reheated Williams

Such pandemonium breaks out at the start of The Night of the Iguana that you wouldn’t think it was the middle of a languid day in Puerto Barrio, Mexico. You almost long for the solitude and quiet of one of the small, screened-in rooms at this oceanside Costa Verde Hotel. But there may not be much peace there, either.

The Rev. Lawrence T. Shannon (Forrest Attaway), distressed and running a fever that’s burning him up in the tropical heat, has barged onto the scene. He’s a clergyman without a congregation, stuck leading groups for a middling tour company. Now his entourage of female Baptist schoolteachers is organizing a mutiny.

Tennessee Williams based The Night of the Iguana on his own 1948 short story, and it’s considered by many to be his last significant work for the stage. If some consider it typical Williams, the richly symbolic play now at Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre, directed by Karen Paisley and filled with a talented cast, is a worthy revival — and anything but a snooze.

At the center of this complex drama is a flawed man at war with himself as much as with those around him. Lawrence has diverged from the tour company’s itinerary to this cheap, rustic hotel (though Paisley’s beautiful set belies that a bit), looking for refuge. Recently widowed innkeeper Maxine (Manon Halliburton) has been expecting him. Just up from a “siesta” with Pancho, one of the hired help (Francisco Javier Villegas), she welcomes back an old friend.

“Lemme look at you,” she says. “You look like you’ve had it.”

“You look like you been having it, too. Get dressed!”

But she doesn’t button up, and she’s just one spark against Lawrence’s tinder. This reverend isn’t the strait-laced type. He has already lost a church post over his sexual liaisons and “atheistic sermons” and is on probation with his employer. Now he has had sex with Charlotte (Hannah Freeman), a teenager, and she is in pursuit — and “under the wing, the military escort,” Lawrence complains, of “butch vocal teacher” Judith Fellowes (Marilyn Lynch).

“Why do you want the young ones, or think that you do?” Maxine, a woman ready to give him comfort, asks this reverend with mommy issues and a contentious relationship with God.

Perhaps Lawrence prefers the virginal type, represented here in the “spinster” Hannah Jelks (Cheryl Weaver), who arrives at the hotel with her 97-year-old grandfather, Nonno (Richard Alan Nichols), the “oldest living and practicing poet,” she says. Itinerant and broke — Nonno recites verse for pay, and Hannah peddles watercolors and “quick character sketches” — they’re allowed to stay for the night. And it’s in the lower light of evening, during Lawrence’s interaction with Hannah, that hidden demons and longings emerge.

Wearing not only Lawrence’s crucifix and clothes but also his skin, Attaway is excellent, outwardly manifesting this man’s panic and inner turmoil. Like the iguana captured and tied up (offstage) by villagers, Lawrence is at the end of a rope.

The able Weaver imbues her Hannah with calm and control, reflecting a desire kept carefully beneath the surface. And as Maxine, the thin-framed Halliburton doesn’t mirror the “stout swarthy woman” of Williams’ description yet communicates this character’s earthiness, along with a more hard-edged and practical nature.

Among the supporting cast, Lynch has all the outrage and contrariness of a stalwart religious-school teacher, while Freeman exudes charisma and feeling as the teenage target of Lawrence’s misplaced affections. Richard Alan Nichols is adept as the nearly blind, infirm poet, and Chris Roady, though onstage briefly, makes an impression as the stranded bus driver.

Upon his arrival at the hotel, Nonno can “feel” and smell the ocean. “It’s the cradle of life,” he says. “Life began in the sea.” While life has pushed some of his fellow travelers back toward the water, the individuals who have come together at this moment in 1940 Mexico might find what they need at the water’s edge.