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Post by Fleance on Jun 11, 2024 14:05:44 GMT
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Post by Jan on Jun 11, 2024 19:15:55 GMT
I think there are many other short or one act plays by well known writers that would be worth reviving. There are two of Coward’s in Suite but he wrote another cycle of ten under the title Tonight at 8:30 and some of those would be interesting to see.
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Post by jr on Jun 12, 2024 6:38:10 GMT
I think there are many other short or one act plays by well known writers that would be worth reviving. There are two of Coward’s in Suite but he wrote another cycle of ten under the title Tonight at 8:30 and some of those would be interesting to see. Those were done on TV with Joan Collins. Got the DVD but haven't watched them yet. www.imdb.com/title/tt1186344/ |
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Post by Fleance on Jun 12, 2024 12:37:25 GMT
I think there are many other short or one act plays by well known writers that would be worth reviving. There are two of Coward’s in Suite but he wrote another cycle of ten under the title Tonight at 8:30 and some of those would be interesting to see. I have Noel and Gertie in the Red Peppers one-act from Tonight at 8:30 on my phone. Great fun! |
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Post by Fleance on Jun 12, 2024 19:24:23 GMT
The Astonished Heart is another Tonight at 8:30 one-act that has been adapted to the film of the same name (1950). Noel plays a psychiatrist who has an affair with his wife's friend, played by Margaret Leighton. Celia Johnson plays the wife. It features a great Coward family cast, including Graham Payn, Joyce Carey, and Alan Webb.
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Post by Jan on Jun 13, 2024 19:42:25 GMT
The Astonished Heart is another Tonight at 8:30 one-act that has been adapted to the film of the same name (1950). Noel plays a psychiatrist who has an affair with his wife's friend, played by Margaret Leighton. Celia Johnson plays the wife. It features a great Coward family cast, including Graham Payn, Joyce Carey, and Alan Webb. Joyce Carey. I’d forgotten her. I saw her last stage appearance. It was in Pygmalion with Peter O’Toole. |
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Post by Dave B on Jun 13, 2024 22:12:30 GMT
Back this evening for A Song at Twilight and to be honest given the double bill, we weren't hugely looking forward to it. It has been a pretty stressful week for life stuff and we even talked about giving it a miss while I cooked dinner earlier. Well, we are very glad we went and very glad we saw the double bill first. This is a much stronger piece, much more engaging and feels like it has substance to it. Given we were last here in previews and it's a couple of weeks later, no surprise to see a much more confident cast - notably Stephen Boxer. It may also help that his character in this doesn't have, or need, any charm and the cold, aloof, cruel exterior and constant facade may play better to Boxer's strengths. Very happy we went back, very happy with the order we've seen them. I think the double bill of slighter plays following this would have been even more of a disappointment. No interval music from Steffan Rizzi as Felix but he was in the bar beforehand with a few numbers including Can't Find My Way Home in English and then a lovely House Of the Rising Sun in Italian!
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Post by joem on Jun 14, 2024 0:04:59 GMT
"Shadows In The Evening" teeters between bathos and comedy before seemingly plumping for the latter. I know Coward was the quintessence of Englishness but the tendency to stiff-upper-lip the most tragic situations (largely gone in these days of over-emoting everything) does sometimes detract from dramatic tension, here bickering between wife and mistress sort of overshadows the imminence of the protagonist's demise.
"Come Into The Garden Maud" (even it's name sounds like an Ayckbourn play) is the more obvious comedy. And if the American accents are a little forced at times and the rich husband's back story a bit hard to credit well... at least there's plenty of laughs.
Not as bad as some comments I'd seen overall, perhaps the cast have begun to crack the play, and nice cameos throughout by Steffan Rizzi as the constant waiter who also regales us with decent guitar and vocals (even a Leonard Cohen song!!!) before the event and in the interval.
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Post by Fleance on Jun 14, 2024 1:13:16 GMT
The Astonished Heart is another Tonight at 8:30 one-act that has been adapted to the film of the same name (1950). Noel plays a psychiatrist who has an affair with his wife's friend, played by Margaret Leighton. Celia Johnson plays the wife. It features a great Coward family cast, including Graham Payn, Joyce Carey, and Alan Webb. Joyce Carey. I’d forgotten her. I saw her last stage appearance. It was in Pygmalion with Peter O’Toole. On Sunday 13 September 1987, I went to a performance of Noel Coward's Semi-Monde at the Royalty Theatre in Kingsway. It was a benefit for the Combined Theatrical Charities Appeal Council. Everyone was in it: Joyce Carey, Elisabeth Welch, Evelyn Laye, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Michael Williams, Finty Williams, Jane Asher, Joanna Lumley, Patricia Hodge, Frank Thornton, Ian Ogilvy, Caroline Blakiston, Tim Pigott-Smith, Angela Thorne, Jeremy Sinden, Gwen Watford, Barry Humphries, and many others. I was lucky to be in London and get a last-minute front row seat. |
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Post by Jan on Jun 14, 2024 5:58:26 GMT
No interval music from Steffan Rizzi as Felix but he was in the bar beforehand with a few numbers including Can't Find My Way Home in English and then a lovely House Of the Rising Sun in Italian!
I will do a separate post about the plays, but on the music I was interested to find that every song Steffan Rizzi played across both performances was (I think) from a couple of years either side of 1966 when the plays were first staged. Without checking I would have guessed they were from a much wider range of dates. |
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Post by Jan on Jun 14, 2024 6:11:50 GMT
Joyce Carey. I’d forgotten her. I saw her last stage appearance. It was in Pygmalion with Peter O’Toole. On Sunday 13 September 1987, I went to a performance of Noel Coward's Semi-Monde at the Royalty Theatre in Kingsway. Must have been around 1982 when I saw Joyce Carey in Pygmalion with Peter O'Toole when she was around 84. She was playing Mrs Higgins which is a significant part. It was touching because the relationship Mrs Higgins has with her son Henry in the play must have mirrored (deliberately I think) their perceived status as actors in the industry. Hard to overstate the charisma and sense of unpredictability O'Toole carried with him on stage. |
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Post by Fleance on Jun 14, 2024 12:10:51 GMT
On Sunday 13 September 1987, I went to a performance of Noel Coward's Semi-Monde at the Royalty Theatre in Kingsway. Must have been around 1982 when I saw Joyce Carey in Pygmalion with Peter O'Toole when she was around 84. She was playing Mrs Higgins which is a significant part. It was touching because the relationship Mrs Higgins has with her son Henry in the play must have mirrored (deliberately I think) their perceived status as actors in the industry. Hard to overstate the charisma and sense of unpredictability O'Toole carried with him on stage. You may have seen her as Mrs. Higgins in 1987, perhaps a month or so before her benefit appearance in Semi-Monde, or when she played the role in 1984. Her appearance in Semi-Monde was a very brief walk-on, with one line, as I recall. I think she had one more such appearance in Coward's Star Quality, a couple of years later. In any case, Mrs. Higgins was her last performance of substance. Btw, I just discovered that Joyce Carey's mother was Lilian Braithwaite, who originated the role of Florence Lancaster in Noel Coward's The Vortex, so Joyce Carey's Coward connections go way back. In 1970, along with Gladys Calthrop, Joyce Carey accompanied Coward to Buckingham Palace, when he received his knighthood. |
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Post by Jan on Jun 16, 2024 9:52:47 GMT
This is the third time recently I’ve had a more positive view of an OT production than early posters here who saw previews. I’m not sure how long a rehearsal period they have at the OT but I get the impression that their previews are not much different to rehearsals. In particular comic or partly comic plays need to be fine-tuned in front of an audience several times before they are ready. Also run times almost always reduce between previews and the post-opening run and the actors are more secure in their parts. For that reason I think reviews and comments here and on social media based on previews are problematic - people may be put off from seeing a production due to unrepresentative reviews. I know that previews are cheaper and that’s why people book them but that’s for a reason - they are not seeing the finished production.
I thought all three plays were well acted and directed without hitting the heights. I like Emma Fielding and was glad to see her on stage again. I’d characterise Stephen Boxer as “reliable”. He has a competent go at parts that on the face of it he isn’t entirely suitable for. In this case as Coward wrote the three parts for himself to play I’m not sure who would have been obvious casting. I last saw Boxer as Titus Andronicus for the RSC, again not obvious casting but a part Coward would have struggled with. Tara Fitzgerald was the most natural casting across the three plays.
The first short play is weak. Coward himself thought this too as he dropped it for the proposed Broadway transfer of the plays. The second short play, which I’d seen before, is a lightweight comedy which was entertaining enough. The longer play is a more substantial work and stood up quite well. The character portrayed was inspired by the writer Somerset Maugham but in the key theme there are echoes of Coward’s own life and that of several film actors both before and since.
Overall a good 3*
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Post by joem on Jun 23, 2024 21:03:05 GMT
"A Song At Twilight" was, unsurprisingly, the most well-rounded play of the "trilogy" with the characters being better delineated and the conflict and synthesis seeming credible, once the horseplay is got out of the way.
I thought Coward had declined towards the end of his career but this holds up fairly well. It's brash and sensitive at the same time, which might have been Coward's epitaph I guess. A worthy revival. We musn't lose sight of the importance of tradition in theatre, so we can tweak or subvert it from a position of knowledge, not a position of ignorance. I fear these days that many reviewers turn up at the theatre as if the play they are reviewing operates in a vacuum. Coward should not be forgotten, each generation has the right to make up its own mind anew about the writers and works which shaped "the canon" and to dismiss the canon as irrelevant is, frankly, an irrelevance.
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Post by Steve on Jul 3, 2024 23:05:27 GMT
Finally saw the Double Bill this afternoon (I had to abandon plans to see these plays earlier due to an injury), and judging by the above comments, the plays have been getting better even faster than I have been getting better lol. Because I thought Stephen Boxer was an absolute hoot as the multimillionaire American dripping money everywhere, Verner Conklin, in "Come into the Garden Maude" this afternoon. He has really nailed how to land a wry punchline at this late stage in the run, and he never missed, whether stomaching drily his wife's pretensions (a deliriously out-of-control flustered barrage from the wonderful Emma Fielding) or getting excited by his prospective Mistress's liberalism (Tara Fitzgerald in top flighty form). Its just laughs, but I laughed a lot to the tune of 4 stars. The other play is just too dated in it's assumption we will be dazzled by how knowing and reasonable a man, his wife and his mistress can be in the face of death. I was bored by that one to the tune of 2 stars. The Orange Tree was totally sold out, more so than anything I've seen there for ages, with a full standing section. I myself have had to resort to booking standing for the final play, but hey ho, I'll give it a go. I'm glad I'm not missing it.  |
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Post by pws on Jul 3, 2024 23:33:11 GMT
I saw A Song At Twilight on Tuesday and thought it was terrific. It really builds and is quite funny in places.
The acting has been criticised but I thought it was first rate, as was the entertainment.
Seeing the rest on Thursday.
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Post by tmesis on Jul 4, 2024 12:21:23 GMT
I've now seen all 3 plays.
I found them all an absolute treat.
The three main actors are terrific (quite a feat of line-learning too) and the singing waiter is the icing on the cake.
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Post by Jan on Jul 4, 2024 14:11:30 GMT
I've now seen all 3 plays. I found them all an absolute treat. The three main actors are terrific (quite a feat of line-learning too) and the singing waiter is the icing on the cake. It was immersive in the modern manner too because down next to the toilets a door to the backstage area had been labelled “Hotel Staff Only”. |
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Post by pws on Jul 4, 2024 21:40:03 GMT
So pleased to have seen these. The interval concert was a treat. The acting was pretty outstanding.
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Post by bee on Jul 5, 2024 23:27:50 GMT
I saw A Song at Twilight this evening, so I've now seen all three plays. I'd concur with the more positive reviews of the people who have seen this a bit later in its run. These are decent plays, really well acted. ASatT in particular is great, especially Emma Fielding. She's off stage for a long period in the middle section of the play but her scenes when she returns are devastating. Brilliant stuff.
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Post by lt on Jul 7, 2024 11:31:44 GMT
Saw the final performance of A Song At Twilight last night, I was slightly concerned after some of the less than positive reviews here, but both my friend and I enjoyed it. I would class it as a good rather than brilliant production. In the first five to ten minutes or so, it felt slightly "stagey" but improved very quickly and I think the play really takes off when ex-partner Carlotta arrives.
And I am sorry not to have had a chance to see the other two Coward plays in the run.
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Post by Jan on Jul 7, 2024 17:07:39 GMT
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And I am sorry not to have had a chance to see the other two Coward plays in the run.
It’s in Bath next week. |
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Post by lt on Jul 7, 2024 19:05:14 GMT
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And I am sorry not to have had a chance to see the other two Coward plays in the run.
It’s in Bath next week. Thanks, a bit far for me! |
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Post by fossil on Jul 8, 2024 14:21:21 GMT
For those in the west country: there is an offer on for the Theatre Royal, Bath.
Best Seats £29.50 Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday evenings
Book online using voucher code SONG2950 or call the Box Office on 01225 448844
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