NOEL COWARD'S SUITE IN TWO KEYS
Lucille Lortel Theatre
121 Christopher St.
between Hudson and Bleecker streets
(212) 239-6200
‘NOEL Coward's Suite in Two Keys" at the Lucille Lortel Theatre offers two plays by the English playwright. Both are from 1966 and were done in London by Coward himself. The first, "Shadows of the Evening," has never been done here and is receiving its American premiere.
The second, "A Song at Twilight," was done in London and then on Broadway in 1974 with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy.
Both plays are set in a hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland, and reveal an elderly man living with a faithful companion and confronting a figure from his past.
Both boast the same cast of four: the English actress Hayley Mills, the American actress Judith Ivey, the English actor Paxton Whitehead and (as a waiter) the American actor Paolo Andino.
The first play, "Shadows of the Evening," is a tiresome account of a London publisher (Whitehead) facing a fatal illness. His longtime mistress (Ivey) summons his wife (Mills) to Switzerland to tell her and ask how they should reveal it to him.
The two women reveal unsuspected strengths and weaknesses. The poor patient turns out to already know his fate and insists on dying elegantly. He disdains religion and all its comforts. But the play is trivial.
Things look up in the second drama, "A Song at Twilight." This is a spicy anecdote involving an aged novelist, his current wife and an old flame.
The novelist is played by Paxton Whitehead as a difficult but witty geezer. While his wife -- a patient, care-taking and sentimental German incarnated superbly by Hayley Mills -- is away, he receives his former lover, impersonated by Judith Ivey in an irresistible blend of teasing and menace.
What Ivey wants of Whitehead is the substance of the play. She wants his agreement to publish his old letters to her And she will use some older letters of his, to a young male, to achieve her goal.
It's an interesting story and perhaps enterprising in bringing Coward's "Private Lives" attitude to face fresh issues.
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