“Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it around like marmalade.” So drolly declared Noel Coward and the new production of his late-life trilogy at the Orange Tree certainly evinces the enduring quality of his incisive insights on life, love and loss, all beautifully captured within Tom Littler’s elegant staging in the round.
OUR VERDICT
Steve Gregson
In many ways the three plays that compose his trilogy are nuanced riffs on a similar theme, a meditation on midlife, the compromises made and the dichotomy between personal fulfilment and the embrace of convention.
Each short play is peopled by familiar Coward creations; affluent, witty and largely disenchanted people, all ensconced in the same Swiss hotel suite atmospherically suggested by Louie Whitmore’s Alpine decoration. These are people often thwarted by their own languishing secrets or mortality itself.
In the day’s rather melancholy first play Shadows of the Evening, a writer tries to stoically face mortality in the company of his former wife and present partner, whilst its companion piece Come Into the Garden, Maud is a delightful foray into broader comic territory as an American couple find their life unravelling in the presence of a free-spirited Italian princess.
Steve Gregson
The concluding, full-length play A Song at Twilight occupies more reflective terrain as an unpleasant writer is forced to confront the secrets of his past in the company of an old flame holding all the cards to his peace of mind.
A four-strong cast work wonders with what must be a marathon feat of memory over five plus hours of overall performance.
Steffan Rizzi is very engaging as Italian waiter Felix who serves all three plays from the vantage point of his drinks trolley, a light-hearted, playful presence leavening some of the intensity elsewhere.
Emma Fielding, Stephen Boxer and Tara Fitzgerald are generally excellent, Fielding highly entertaining in Maud as the sort of high-octane, social-climbing American writers love to satirise and she’s also good in a total volte face in Twilight, as the fair, formidable and fair German wife of rather nasty Hugo Latymer whose secrets come back to haunt him in spectacular fashion.
Steve Gregson
Boxer has less polarised roles to adopt and is convincing throughout, but particularly enjoyable as the languid, likeable Verner Conklin in Maud, embracing the chance for unexpected romantic happiness in dramatic style.
Fitzgerald, least persuasive in Shadows, is absolutely superb in this as the vibrant Principessa Caragnani and in Twilight where she maximises every delicious moment as the highly coiffed, caustic Carlotta whose appetite for revenge matches her bottomless consumption of pink champagne.
Clearly self-autobiographical in spirit with its literary musings and revelations of homosexual secrets, Coward’s 1965 pensive trilogy, casting a keen eye on the foibles of mankind, is an absolute treat in many respects, perfectly suited to the Orange Tree’s beguiling intimacy. All three plays can be seen in one illuminating marathon or glimpsed individually, as preferred.
Cumulatively, it’s certainly a production to relish.
Orange Tree Theatre
1 Clarence Street, Richmond, TW9 2SA
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Monday 12pm - 6pm Tuesday 12pm - 6pm Wednesday 12pm - 6pm Thursday 12pm - 6pm Friday 12pm - 6pm Saturday 12pm - 6pm Sunday Closed
