Suite in Three Keys – Orange Tree Theatre

Comprised of the individual plays, A Song at Twilight, Shadows of the Evening, and Come into the Garden, Maud, the latter two offered as a double bill, this is a hefty theatrical event for both performer and audience. Directed by Tom Littler, the Orange Tree Theatre’s Artistic Director, this production makes thorough use of the theatre’s performance facilities, and even positions one of its actors in the bar during pre-show and interval to serenade audiences in dulcet Italian tones with songs of the plays’ era. Referred to in each script simply as “Felix, a waiter” this Mediterranean songbird, played with charming humility and buoyant grace by Steffan Rizzi, provides the melodic throughline linking each piece to the other.

The set, designed by Louie Whitemore is also remarkably consistent, and her costumes too, although extensive and varied, cohere into a steadfast aesthetic that gives a singular sense of the time, space, and class of each piece. These are essential considerations as Coward’s writing reveals itself over the course of both performances’ almost three-hour run-times to be notably both ahead of and behind the times of their publication in 1965. Modern audiences might bridle a bit at the shallow and shrill wife concerned only with her figure, the “woman with a past” terrified of corrupting her confessed serial-cheater lover to be, or the sub-textually deficient waiter who makes up for what he lacks in agency or agenda in assiduousness. These plays, however, are stimulating and engaging, even after the fourth hour of viewing.

In Shadows of the Evening a direct, touching, and bittersweetly complicated collection of musings on fatality and felicity, Stephen Boxer plays George Hilgay, an unretired publisher recently diagnosed with a terminal illness who is caught in the twin cares of his wife Anne (Emma Fielding) and his mistress, Linda (Tara Fitzgerald) as they attempt to rekindle their long burnt-out friendship in an effort to light his way.

After a mere fifteen-minute intermission (played through beautifully by resident singing waiter Felix) this trio returns to the stage as Anna-Mary Conklin (Emma Fielding), George Conklin (Stephen Boxer), and Maud Caragnani (Tara Fitzgerald) an American couple traveling the continent and a British-born, Sicilian princess, living in Rome but visiting the Hotel Beau Rivage on Lake Geneva and offering George a very complex escape hatch from his suffocatingly simple marriage. The emotional whiplash of transitioning so swiftly from moving drama to rigid comedy is rather brutal and the tenderness of the first piece is somewhat undercut by the cruelty of the second. In A Song at Twilight however tenderness and cruelty are equally matched and butt heads to most exquisite effect.

The longest of the three by almost two times, A Song at Twilight follows the confrontation between Hugo Latymer (Stephen Boxer), an eminent English writer and Carlotta Gray (Tara Fitzgerald) an actress from his past with a bone to pick. In this play each actor gets something to really sink their teeth into. Emma Fielding is particularly impressive as Hilde, Hugo’s German-born wife, and translator. The sheer volume of dialogue and the variety of accents (coached with remarkable efficacy by Nick Trumble) each actor undertakes in this project is mind boggling and almost exhausting to merely spectate. Individually strong but collectively undeniable this is a dramatic event well worth girding yourself for.

Reviewer: Kira Daniels

Reviewed: 8th June 2024

North West End UK Rating: