Shadows of the Evening/Come into the Garden, Maud (part of A Suite in Three Keys: A Noël Coward triple-bill), Theatre Royal Bath, until 13 July. Words by Melissa Blease.
To use a metaphor that’s trending right now, Noël Coward’s A Suite in Three Keys is game of two halves – or, rather, two-thirds, as the full Suite incorporates the two short plays designed to be presented as a double bill in the spotlight here and the stand-alone, full-length drama A Song at Twilight (read our review of A Song at Twilight here), the whole Suite currently being shown concurrently at Theatre Royal Bath.
The trilogy of dramas are all set in one luxurious Swiss hotel room in the 1960s, and a quartet of actors (Stephen Boxer, Emma Fielding, Tara Fitzgerald and Steffan Rizzi) triple-up as unrelated characters across all three productions; an admirable (if not exhausting) feat indeed.
Given the law, social mores and backstory behind Coward’s creation of the Suite at the time of writing, it could be said that all three plays reveal Coward’s bold, brave stance on all manner of subjects that, even in the early 1960s, were rarely outed so candidly: in A Song at Twilight, homosexuality is thrust into the spotlight, while the themes within the partnership duo focus on debates around terminal illness and impending death (Shadows of the Evening) before moving on to how, why and when to leave a distinctly stale, toxic marriage in Come Into The Garden, Maud.
But while A Song at Twilight sparkles with ‘typically’ Coward-esque wit, wisdom and wilful disdain for social convention to make it the exquisitely moving tour de force that it is, the two related plays, in comparison, are much more laborious.
First up, Shadows of the Evening. Publisher George Hilgay (a classy, charismatic performance from Stephen Boxer) is terminally ill. Believing that George has yet to be fully appraised of his diagnosis by his doctors, his long-term mistress Linda Savignac (an elegantly dynamic Tara Fitzgerald) brings his estranged wife Anne (Emma Fielding) to Switzerland for support. But as the drama unfolds, it is George who ends up supporting the two formerly-warring women as lengthy debates on how the trio will deal with the imminent arrival of the Grim Reaper ensue, leaving us to digest a play that could be described, on several levels, as a lifeless drama indeed.
After the interval, the playfully provocative, cryptically cynical Come into the Garden, Maud offers lighter-hearted relief.
Fielding is comedically captivating as Anna-Mary Conklin, a shallow harridan with the disposition of an aggrieved seagull. As Anna-Mary’s billionaire husband Verner, Boxer allows glimmers of rebellion to peek out from beneath the veneer of henpecked husband preparing us, perhaps, for his wife’s comeuppance to come. Cue a visit from Maud Caragnani (Tara Fitzgerald): a down-on-her-luck British-born Sicilian princess living in Rome, vaguely socially connected to the Conklins.
If Anna-Mary is the American version of a cross between classic British TV sitcom icons Mrs Slocombe and Hyacinth Bucket, Maud is Ab Fab’s Edina Monsoon: proudly sassy, faux-classy… and permanently keeping a keen eye on which of her many friends and associates may offer the most benefits.
When Anna-Mary takes her husband off the guest list for the dinner party she’s hosting at their hotel that evening, Verner and Maud see the prospect of a brighter future for both of them on the horizon. It can’t be said that they’re fast to grab that future, though; too many dialogue-heavy/wit-free exchanges slow the pace down to almost-standstill at times, the denouement is all-too-predictable and we’re left with a whole heap of unfinished business to deal with after the curtain falls on the Conklin’s unhappy marriage (and, to an extent, the next step on Linda Savignac/the Hilgay’s shadowy future, too).
Was it Coward’s intention for the audience to come to their own conclusions on how things did (or didn’t?) pan out for the characters in two-thirds of his last works for the stage… or did he simply run out of steam as he stared into his own abyss?
Main image: Suite in Three Keys – Stephen Boxer as Verner and Tara Fitzgerald as Maud in Come into the Garden, Maud. Photo: Steve Gregson
For more information and tickets click here.
See our review of the first part of the trilogy here: