Mail on Sunday, June 9, 1991, by Kenneth Hurren
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Let Coward flinch - or, anyway, let his spirit - as the 
lesser works of Noel the Master are dis-interred.

Like, say, "Point Valaine," his mid-Thirties flop, now 
dragged from long oblivion to the stage of the Minerva, 
Chichester.

Coward himself knew that it bombed between the demands of 
comedy and tragedy - and Tim Luscombe's inventive direction 
cannot really redeem it.

Set in a hotel on a small Caribbean island, it begins with 
musical-comedy-style sketches of the guests - a babble of 
gay young men (yes, honestly) and twittering girls - all 
laconically observed by a cynical novelist (Edward 
Petherbridge).

But a steamy infernal triangle intrudes. The hotel 
proprietess's cosily carnal affair with her headwaiter fails 
to cope with the advent of a priggish but handsome aviator.

The gaudily emotional scene between the long-term lovers is 
fiercely played by Sara Kestelman and Jack Klaff, but the 
situation never seems important or indeed credible enough to 
justify its tragic resolution.

These goings-on collide disastrously with the earlier 
comedy, which is not so much light as weightless.



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