Tennessee Williams’s play, set in the suitably steamy environs of Mexico in 1940, tells the story of the Reverend Dr T Lawrence Shannon (Harrelson), a defrocked, alcoholic and sexually tormented priest who arrives at a run down coastal hotel owned by the rather rustic Maxine Faulk (Clare Higgins). The hotel’s other residents include Hannah, played by Jenny Seagrove, a tweedy-but-resilient spinster struggling to care for her ailing grandfather and Charlotte, a nubile, brattish teenager with a ravenous sexual appetite.

Cloistered together in the sweltering heat, this intriguing quartet of characters are soon embroiled in a world of bubbling sexual tension, tortured moral quandary and faltering faith as Williams embarks on one of his most virtuoso delvings into human desire and agony.