Who: Dylan McDermott, Phylicia Rashad, Roberta Maxwell, Austin Pendleton, Jean Lichty, Keith Randolph Smith, Carmen Berkeley, Eliud Kauffman, Julio Macias, Stephanie Schmiderer, Bradley James Tejeda, John Hans Tester
What: Prerecorded reading of Tennessee Williams classic benefiting the Actors Fund
Where: La Femme Theatre Productions
When: December 2-6, $10-$250
Why: “There are worse things than chastity,” Hannah Jelkes says in Tennessee Williams’s The Night of the Iguana. “Yes: Lunacy and death,” Lawrence Shannon responds. Williams’s tale of a former minister accused of a serious crime on the eve of WWII in a hotel in Acapulco transformed from a short story to a one-act play to a three-act Broadway show and to a film between 1948 and 1964, with such stars as Patrick O’Neal Bette Davis, and Margaret Leighton in the original Broadway production, Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr in the John Huston movie, and Woody Harrelson, Clare Higgins, and Jenny Seagrove in a London revival. It will now make its online debut in a prerecorded reading staged by La Femme Theatre Productions, which was formed in 2015 to explore and illuminate the universal female experience. Streaming December 2-6, the play, a benefit for the Actors Fund, features Dylan McDermott as Reverend Shannon, Phylicia Rashad as Maxine, Roberta Maxwell as Miss Fellowes, Austin Pendleton as Nonno, Jean Lichty as Hannah, Keith Randolph Smith as Jake, Carmen Berkeley as Charlotte, Eliud Kauffman as Hank, Julio Macias as Pancho, Stephanie Schmiderer as Frau Fahrenkopf, Bradley James Tejeda as Pedro, and John Hans Tester as Herr Fahrenkopf. The reading is directed by Emily Mann, with sets and background design by Beowulf Boritt and music and sound by Darron L West. Tickets are $10 to $250 for a forty-eight-hour stream, depending on what you can afford.