Herald Tribune, June 12, 1991, by Sheridan Morley ----------------------------------------------------------- It is courageous of the Chichester Festival, particularly in its currently precarious economy, to disinter an unknown Noel Coward drama from 1934 demanding, on the studio stage of the Minerva, a cast of 15 and the setting of a colonial guest house on an island off Trinidad. "Point Valaine" was written for Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne at a time when, in the immediate aftermath of "Private Lives," Coward wished to establish himself as something more than the playboy of the West End world and chronicler of its cocktails and laughter. Dedicated to one of his first patrons, Somerset Maugham, the play owes an obvious debt to "Rain" and all those short stories of passion in rain-soaked outposts of empire. Here we have a middle-aged hotel manageress, the Russian headwaiter with whom she is conducting a scandalous liaison, and a young English aviator forming a passionate triangular love story that ends with the flamboyant waiter hurling himself to death by sharks. The author always felt the play "not quite good enough," but he also acknowledged "an irritable affection" for its grand guignol, and it is a considerable tribute to its director Tim Luscombe that he has managed to stage the whole hothouse affair without crossing the borderline of camp parody or ever getting even a giggle in the wrong place. The first act is a direct forerunner of Rattigan's "Separate Tables," complete with domineering dowager mother and repressed spinster daughter, and it is hard to believe that Sir Terence was unaware of his sources. But as we lurch into Maugham country, the play takes on its own head-and-dust passions, as Coward explores his fascination with the sensibilities and stupidities of expatriate life. Edward Petherbridge, Jack Klaff and Sara Kestelman lead a strong cast. ----------------------------------------------------------- Bentley's Bedlam http://www.BetsyDa.com/bedlam.html This website is for information and entertainment purposes only and is not intended to infringe on copyrights held by others.