Theatre review: Suite in Three Keys -Shadows of the Evening andCome into the Garden, Maud

The Orange Tree marks the 50th anniversary of Noël Coward's death by staging very nearly his last works for the stage, the trilogy Suite in Three Keys. The plays are performed as originally intended, in a double bill alternating with the third, longer play, all set in the mid-1960s in the same luxury suite of a Lausanne hotel. And there's a distinctly unpromising start as we open with the damp squib of a drama Shadows of the Evening, apparently such a critical flop it got ditched entirely when the original production transferred to Broadway. George (Stephen Boxer) has lived with his lover Linda (Tara Fitzgerald) for several years after leaving his wife: Anne (Emma Fielding) has stayed on relatively good terms with them for the sake of her children, except for the fact that she's refused to grant him a divorce in all that time. Now Linda, at one time Anne's friend, has asked her to come urgently from London to Switzerland.

George has melanoma and somewhere between three and nine months left to live, but he doesn't know: The doctor has left it up to Linda to decide whether it will be better for him to be told or not.

Linda's invited Anne over partly to help decide if ignorance will be bliss for George, partly to ensure she and their children get the chance to tie up loose ends, but by the time George actually arrives he's already been told about his illness offstage, so the initial trigger for the story just limps to a close. So does any other suggestion that there might actually be a story here. Coward himself was getting sick at this time so perhaps it's understandable that the play is largely musings on mortality, but while there's undoubtedly some nice passages here, and an understanding of how the most important discussions can tail off into the banal - the characters go on a digression about the etymology of marmalade - you can't convince me there's a plot here.

For all their bickering at each other, the three are unfailingly appreciative and polite towards waiter Felix (Steffan Rizzi, who also provides interval entertainment singing Italian translations of '60s pop standards.) So when Anna-Mary (Fielding) opens Come into the Garden, Maud by snapping at and berating him, we know where Coward stands on this wealthy American with a purple rinse she's also deeply disappointed by. This comic second play is certainly more entertaining, with Anna-Mary panicking over the dinner party she's hosting that evening for minor royalty, ending up by banning her own husband Verner (Boxer) from attending so that there aren't 13 at the table.

This leaves him alone in the suite to have his dinner, after which he's visited by the Contessa Maud (Fitzgerald.) His wife has also grumbled that Maud was too flirtatious with Verner when they last met, but isn't aware quite how seriously he reciprocated, so when they're left together they start making bold plans to run off. The first scene is the stronger here, with a lot of the trademark Coward witticisms really landing as he satirises the awkwardness when Americans and Europeans are faced with each other's culture. This afternoon's audience was for some reason packed with Americans, who seemed to enjoy the digs at their national character (and I also heard a couple of them impressed at Fielding's accent.)

With the star comic turn away for most of the final scene Anna-Mary remains the butt of the joke behind her back, which starts to tip things over into a bit more of Coward's brand of misogyny (at least we don't get a trademark reference to how hilarious hitting women is, unless it was there and Tom Littler's production cut it.) So the two shorter plays of the trio make for a so-so double bill with a tendency to run out of steam, but there's no question the cast are giving it a better production than it probably deserves.

Suite in Three Keys - Shadows of the Evening and Come into the Garden, Maud 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.