Review: Suite in Three Keys – A Song at Twilight, Theatre Royal Bath – ‘At times, you could hear a pin drop’

A Song at Twilight is a very heartfelt play with an important message for those who would be great. My ‘plus one’ for the night adored it through and through. The audience laughed loudly and, at times, you could hear a pin drop.

This is the full-length play in Noël Coward’s Suite in Three Keys trilogy – all playing at Theatre Royal Bath this week.

It’s the 1960s and so-so actor Carlotta Gray (Tara Fitzgerald) swoops in for a reunion with former lover and ‘great British writer’ Sir Hugo (Stephen Boxer). Hilde, his wife of 20 years (excellently played by Emma Fielding) is leaving them to it while she has a night out with her adored friend Liesl.

Suite In Three Keys – Emma Fielding as Hilde Latymer in A Song At Twilight

Carlotta and Hugo play cat and mouse over dinner in his suite. She wants his permission to print his old love letters in her memoirs. When he refuses (“I won’t let you use my name as a stepping stone”) she reveals a trump card, which I won’t expose.

For me, Coward used too many words. It’s still typically smart, at times witty, and valiantly delivered by the creative team, but A Song At Twilight is often too chewy. I’m a little relieved to report that Coward was not always a genius. Like every writer at one time or another, he has allowed exploratory diatribe to take over.

Stephen Boxer as Hugo Latymer

Had this been written by a writer today, without National Treasure status, a red pen would have torn through the first and final thirds, so the drama could sing through. But it is all credit to the cast that they have the chops to handle this. I’d personally adore a film adaptation with the cuts, close-ups and slower delivery these lines deserve, but that’s for another life.

Director Tom Littler has had to serve many masters with this production – Coward’s fans and reputation, as well as modern audience taste and moral codes. He does it well, brilliantly supported by the creative team (from set to costume, music and lights, not a curtain, vodka bottle or hair is out of place).

Tara Fitzgerald as Carlotta Gray and Stephen Boxer as Hugo Latymer

I will leave you with Hugo’s lesson. He realises, at the end of his career, that he is not loved. He is not even liked. He is not a great writer, but merely a successful one, purely thanks to the way he has chosen to treat people, in order to maintain his image.

Coward smites him with the worst possible injury for a man so concerned with how he is perceived: the fact that everyone else – even those he looked down on – saw all this. Blinded by his own vanity and fear, ultimately, he only managed to fool himself.

Suite in Three Keys – A Song at Twilight is at Theatre Royal Bath on July 9-13, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at 7.30pm and Saturday at 2.30pm.

The double bill of Shadows of the Evening / Come Into The Garden, Maud is on Wednesday at 2.30pm and Thursday and Saturday at 7.30pm. Tickets are available at www.theatreroyal.org.uk.

All photos: Steve Gregson

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