A SONG AT TWILIGHT. To 2 May.

Tour.

A SONG AT TWILIGHT
by Noel Coward.

Tour to 2 May 2009.
Runs 2hr 35min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 March at Royal and Derngate (Royal Theatre ) Northampton.

Love’s old song proves not so sweet.
Three ages span Noel Coward’s plays: biting social youth in the 1920s, glamour-ridden years of comic success in the thirties, and the later age of resistance. Hostility to post-war social change and, a decade on, to Anger-era drama eventually redirected his energies to a successful, lucrative cabaret career in American high-life hot-spots like Las Vegas.

There were still plenty of people to be his rapt audience. But it was a new theatre that began his dramatic rehabilitation, with Hampstead Theatre’s 1963 revival of Private Lives. Three years later, Coward burst back into the West End, producing three plays over two evenings, set in rooms of a smart Swiss hotel, and collectively called Suite in Three Keys.

Song is the full-length piece in this two-nighter, each part of which, written for two men and two women, constitutes an examination of homosexuality. Coward’s serious, troubled approach met with success, opening a can of worms in his garden of affluent success.

It’s both a chamber and conversation piece, built round successful writer Hugo Latymer’s meeting with old-flame Carlotta Gray. At first she seems to have called about publishing their old correspondence, but after the interval she resurrects letters to the gay partner of his youth, Perry Sheldon, unfolding a past that stretches back to the start of Coward’s playwriting career.

Coward’s skill, and a major success of Nikolai Foster’s fine revival, lies in Hugo’s realisation Perry was worthless while still loving him unbearably. Peter Egan, at the opposite from his early command of his secretary-wife Hilde, seems detached from the surrounding luxurious furnishing as he stands bereft, grieving over his memories.

Hugo’s sexuality is soon evident, in Latymer’s look at Felix (Daniel Bayle’s young waiter clearly recognises the signals). Egan often sits hunched, rejecting, and later fearing, the world around. Belinda Lang’s Carlotta seems like a stringless marionette in her loose-limbed relaxation and control: she’s actually the one pulling the strings.

Lang’s fine performance doesn’t overshadow Kerry Peers, outstanding as the efficient Hilde who understands Hugo, lovingly bears his jibes about her Germanic character, and finally shapes the play’s end through her understanding.

Sir Hugo Latymer: P:eter Egan.
Carlotta Gray: Belinda Lang.
Hilde Latymer: Kerry Peers.
Felix: Daniel Bayle.

Director: Nikolai Foster.
Designer/Costume: Matthew Wright.
Lighting: Colin Wood.
Sound: Marcus Christensen.
Composer: Tom Deering.

2009-03-08 12:18:32