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SUITE IN TWO KEYS by Noël Coward
Venue: Watford Palace 1988
Director: Matthew Francis

Cast

SHADOWS OF THE EVENING
Linda Savignac Isla Blair
Felix Mark Crowdy
Anne Hilgay Caroline Blakiston
George Hilgay Francis Matthews
COME INTO THE GARDEN MAUD
Anna-Mary Conklin Caroline Blakiston
Felix Mark Crowdy
Verner Cronklin Francis Matthews
Maud Caragnani
Isla Blair

Review

Noël Coward knew he was dying when he wrote Shadows of the Evening and it shows. The character, George, perhaps a self portrait, is sophisticated and witty.  But death is not funny, especially one’s own, and George (Coward) slips into penny-paper philosophies of the worst kind after being told he has less than nine months to live.  He tries to help the two women in his life, and himself, by coming to terms with the inevitable. “Grief is no longer lasting than happiness,” he unhelpfully points out, cutting a sophisticated dash that prompts neither sadness  laughter from the audience. Thus, the first half of the Palace double bill Suite in Two Keys was almost literally deadly dull.  It was, though, partly saved by exquisite performances by Francis Matthews as George, dying husband and lover, his live-in mistress Linda (Isla Blair), wife Anne (Caroline Blakiston) and waiter (Mark Crowdy).  And by a fabulous set depicting a private suite in a smart hotel in Switzerland where George has lived for five years with his mistress, leaving his wife and children behind him in the family home in England.

It is not until the same cast step into the same room for the second half of the double bill, Come into the Garden Maud, that the audience seems to relax.  Caroline Blakiston cuts straight through any dulled senses and has us laughing with relief and anticipation as American socialite Anna-Mary Conklin doing battle with the ‘natives’ on the telephone in a frantic warm up to ‘the’ dinner party. Francis Matthews this time stars as the hapless millionaire husband Verner dragged along for the European social round, footing the bill to constant abuse from his loud-mouthed, curley-haired wife, whose one object in life is to impress. Isla Blair once more returns as the temptress, Princess Maud, earning full sympathy for her action of freeing George, who on the eve of the event is banned from his wife's dinner party in honour of some obscure prince, because the numbers worked out at 13 with a late cancellation. The final scene, with the deliciously cruel caricature of an ‘American wife’ so wrapped up in her petty worries that she totally fails to notice that her husband is vanishing out of her life, is Coward as most of us prefer him, with acting to write home about by both Caroline Blakiston and Frances Matthews.