Theatre review: Suite in Three Keys -A Song at Twilight

The third and final play in Noël Coward's Suite in Three Keys is a full-length one, so it plays on its own in Tom Littler's revival of these late dramas. A Song at Twilight is, at least in Littler's production, the part of the trilogy that most acknowledges the fact that the Sixties are starting to swing. Well, ageing Hollywood starlet Carlotta (Tara Fitzgerald) acknowledges it, anyway, sporting the most preposterous and gravity-defying of Chris Smyth's wigs for these shows, enjoying the sound of pop songs playing outside the window, and firmly believing that an overhaul of social opinion on sexuality is overdue. But the man she's visiting (in Louie Whitemore's Swiss hotel suite that the story shares with the earlier double bill) is the sort to slam the windows shut against the noise, and certainly one who'd rather keep certain things behind closed doors.

Hugo (Stephen Boxer) is a successful literary novelist and playwright with whom she had a relationship in the 1920s. She's resurfaced 40 years later after he published his memoirs - upset, he assumes, at the brief and dismissive way he referred to her.

She is upset but not on her own behalf: She knows their affair didn't mean much but Hugo was even more dismissive of a mutual friend: The man, now dead, whom he truly loved, and she's got the love letters to prove it. Carlotta is theoretically there to blackmail him but in by far the most successful use of Coward's sometimes nebulous storytelling in this trilogy, even she's not entirely clear on what exactly she wants from him.

You'd think there might be an autobiographical element to Coward writing about a beloved writer hiding his queerness in plain sight, but apparently this is based on Somerset Maugham (the blurb says "reputedly," which I'm going to interpret as Coward announcing it to anyone who stood still long enough.) Although I'd say the play is at least quarter of an hour too long, it's still easily the best of the three: Even though the clues seeded early on, like Hugo noticing waiter Felix's (Steffan Rizzi) "swimmer's shoulders" or Carlotta suggesting he'd like her son because he's so good-looking, give us a pretty good idea of where the story is going, Fitzgerald and Boxer really sell the tension of an encounter where Hugo fails to see how he's walking into a trap.

Emma Fielding gets to do her third accent in as many plays as Helge, Hugo's German wife and secretary of 20 years, who views their marriage as something a little more nuanced than just one of convenience. There's a particular reminder of Coward's tendency towards cruelty in the cornered Hugo lashing out at his wife for her country's actions in the War, knowing full well as he does that she herself lost a loved one in the Holocaust; at least in this case it feels like a deliberate nod to Hugo's personality.

The conclusions Coward comes to feel very much of their time - I doubt I'm the only 21st century viewer to empathise more with Carlotta's desperate need for Hugo to, if not make amends for the ways he betrayed the man he loved and aggressively denied his own sexuality, at least to confront those things about himself. But if the conclusion isn't a big dramatic catharsis, that's in keeping with a story that must have felt quite bold in even dealing with a subject that was only just starting to dare to speak its name.

Suite in Three Keys - A Song at Twilight by Noël Coward is booking in repertory until the 6th of July at the Orange Tree Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Steve Gregson.