Pick of the Week

Photo by Michael Lamont

A Song at Twilight

Review by Paul Birchall

Was this playwright Noel Coward’s “coming out” play?  Written in 1965, a year or two before homosexuality was finally legalized in Britain, this late jewel from the playwright known for coruscating dialogue, charm, and facile plotting, receives a luxurious and evocative staging by director Art Manke.

Given the work’s pioneering depiction of an elderly gay man – probably a stand-in for Coward himself (who certainly appeared in the role in its first production) – it is fascinating to imagine the sheer dissident ferocity that this piece would have unveiled on its contemporary culture.  And, yet, considering that there are many more productions of Coward’s Hay Fever and Private Lives than there are stars in the heavens, it’s a wonder that this wise and funny play, written at the end of Coward’s career and life, doesn’t get performed more often.

All the staples of truly excellent Coward production are present: the arch wit and snaky characterizations, but here they are threaded with a wisdom and compassion that could only come from an author at the height of his introspective and philosophical powers. And, oh my, yes, the one-liners.

Sir Hugo Latymer (Bruce Davison) resides in a palatial suite of a Swiss lakeside hotel, where he endlessly spits venom at his long-suffering, yet inexplicably devoted wife Hilde (Roxanne Hart). Hugo’s health is in decline and, though he has the reputation for being one of his generation’s great men of letters, he is all but stewed in unfathomable bitterness. Into this dragon’s den comes Carlotta Gray (Sharon Lawrence), a love from Hugo’s long buried past.

Carlotta, an aging actress whose career never really took off, has resisted growing old gracefully with many plastic surgeries, injections, and other emollients. “It’s not that the years have forgotten me,” she quips, “I have remembered them and have just taken proper precautions.”

However, she also announces that she’s writing her memoirs – and she wants the notoriously reclusive Hugo to give permission for her to publish the love letters they exchanged many years ago. Hugo, at first, dismisses Carlotta’s request out-of-hand – which forces her to bring out the big guns: She has also come into the possession of love letters written between Hugo and a now deceased gentleman, Perry. Either Hugo agrees to let her publish her and Hugo’s letters, or a biographer will be given the Perry-Hugo letters. Sir Hugo is understandably wroth.

In many of Coward’s plays, the humor and patter is breezy and glib.  Here, in Manke’s beautifully melancholy staging, the barbs and repartee come across as reflexive self- defense mechanisms to ward off attempts to spark less controllable emotions and chaos. Davison’s excellent Sir Hugo snipes when he feels threatened or hurt, and his reactions turn his words into artfully brandished weapons. And, yet, Manke’s production suggests that Hugo is a man whose self-loathing is both the source of his wit and the root of his sorrow.

For those of us familiar with Davison from his genial TV scale persona, his performance here is compelling. With his shock of unkempt white hair and flashing eyes, he is the very portrait of ironic malice.  His Sir Hugo is almost majestic, with Patrick McGoohan-like quirks and John Hurt-like smirks. His petulance comes across as strangely vulnerable and sad.

Lawrence’s gorgeously glacial turn as Carlotta contains the classiness of a vampy Joan Collins melded onto an an unexpected twist of earthy ruthlessness. In a performance that ranges from brittle to touching, even for her old enemy, she expresses more with a batted eye and a upturned mouth than most performers can with pages of dialogue.   Hart’s Hilde is an unexpectedly sophisticated character as well: Although doggedly devoted to Hugo for reasons of her own, she sees him with terrifyingly clear eyes and is perhaps his darkest critic. —Paul Birchall 

Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molina Ave, Pasadena; Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., 4 p.m.; Sun., 2 & 7 p.m.; through (626) 356-7529, www.pasadenaplayhouse.org