Suite in Three Keys - Orange Tree

I rather foolishly booked thinking I was seeing A SONG AT TWILIGHT together with one other from the triple bill (an uncharacteristic error on my part) and actually found the reverse from "bgarde". I thought Shadows lacked pace and whilst slight, thought Maud was more entertaining and I smiled a good deal. Aside from Mr Boxer's call for prompts, I thought the cast were fine if unexceptional. I agree about Stefan Rizzi but not sure what the point of the interval concert was! Still I would rather have a minor Coward than most anything of today's writers.

Slightly depressing to read. Booked to see in a few weeks, after a strong season last year, so far in 2024 been rather disappointed by the OT productions this year.

That's interesting. Did you like Northanger Abbey and Test Match?

Turned out not to be mine either!

I booked for this on separate days. I must say I found the booking process excruciating. With the different combinations of plays, the not very friendly website and my own calendar I thought I would never be able to get the right dates.

I'm really grateful you started this thread. I didn't read the small print so had only bought a ticket for one of the shows (the double bill). Been trying to get a ticket for the other one all day but it seems their booking system is down today.

Agree or call them by the names of the actual plays!

I did a marathon viewing of all three plays yesterday, and I was surprised by how much I liked them. For me, the most purely comic play, Come to the Garden Maud, was also the most successful. The American accents were a bit dodgy--Emma Fielding seemed to be going for New Jersey while Stephen Boxer sounded a bit Texan, so I was surprised to learn midway through that they were both supposed to be born and raised in Minnesota. But this did feel like a Coward twist on the kind of story the great Minnesotan writer Sinclair Lewis told in novels like Dodsworth.

Shadows in the Evening starts very strong when it's a two-hander with Emma Fielding and Tara Fitzgerald as a wife and mistress exchanging bitchy repartee. But when Stephen Boxer enters the room, a lot of the energy starts to deflate. Some of that is down to Boxer's performance; it's hard to believe that these two women were ever competing for this boring old fart. But some of it is a problem with Coward's writing; once we learn that Boxer's character already knows he has terminal cancer, the play's primary dramatic tension disippates, and it's left spinning its wheels for 30 minutes with pseudo-profound speeches about fearing death and cherishing life.

A Song at Twilight could also use a bit of editing, but it's ultimately a very interesting period piece about a bitter closeted writer and the ways his extreme secrecy affects the various women in his life. The first act is a bit slow, as it builds to the big reveal of the letters the writer wrote to a male lover, but once all the cards are on the table, Act 2 is more exciting.

And I agree with rob that Felix the waiter was a highlight of all three plays (and of the interval for the double act, when he sang Italian versions of the Beatles' "Michelle" and Dusty Springfield's "Wishin and Hopin"). I loved how we got little glimpses of Felix's own backstory across all three plays.

A train driver taking ill and causing all rail services to Richmond to be suspended was not the drama I was looking for last Friday evening. Evicted at Barnes and scrambling for an Uber, we made "curtain up" with seconds to spare.

I'm so glad we did, as A Song at Twilight really hit home. Some say Coward based this on Somerset Maugham, but it felt to me very much like a self-reckoning by the author. We are presented with accusations of deception and a defence of a lifetime of not being open about one's true self. Coward does not hold back in making the case against the ageing Hugo.

I found the second act to be particularly moving. This was in no small measure due to the deeply affecting, pitch-perfect performances of the three principals and exquisitely-judged direction.

I was happy with the running time and didn't feel there was anything meriting pruning.

I can't wait to see the other two "keys" next week.

Five stars.

Act 1: 19:35-20:40
Act 2: 21:01-21:59

Wednesday this week for all three of the plays.

Professional reviews long since ceased to be the yardstick by which I would measure my likelihood of appreciating a production. Actually, that not quite true; I have an inverse correlation with some, so that can be useful to know.

Guardian 4*. Telegraph 4* too but that doesn’t mean much.