The Times, June 7, 1991, by Benedict Nightingale
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This play is remembered, if at all, as Noel Coward's botched 
attempt to remind the world that he was the fierce young 
dramatist who had made his name with "The Vortex," not just 
the wit who had concocted "Private Lives." Even with Alfred 
Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in the leads, it foundered on 
Broadway in 1935; and it had to wait another decade for a 
British production which, as it happened, did not reach the 
West End. "I have never really considered this play quite 
good enough" was Coward's cabled reaction when he was asked 
about a transfer. That is the verdict, solemnly pronounced 
by the defendant on himself, which Tim Luscombe is now 
trying to overturn.

If his production does not completely do so, it is because 
there is something incomplete about the play. The setting is 
a Caribbean hotel, heavily people by characters who, one 
feels, would be more rewardingly treated by another pen. A 
bossy mother and her invalid daughter await the Terence 
Rattigan of "Separate Tables." Two bronzed young men, more 
obviously gay than in the original, are clearly hoping for 
Joe Orton to be born. Most of the other characters would 
probably be grateful if any old hack turned up with a good 
line or two.

Certainly, the situation demands the attention of Tennessee 
Williams. It was brave of Coward to try to embody both the 
passion of the ageing hotel proprietor for a young aviator, 
and the brutal jealousy of her lover, the Soviet head 
waiter. At the play's denouement, the language of rage and 
humiliation comes winging across the stalls; but it would 
resound more powerfully if its ultimate source, the guts, 
had been explored in greater depth. Even nowadays, when we 
are almost too aware of the importance of subtext, it is a 
lot to ask a performer to spend a play being wordlessly 
desperate. 

Sara Kestelman, watchful and drawn, and Jack Klaff, 
stealthily padding about with a drinks tray, do their best 
to suggest inner darkness; and their big confrontation, with 
him raving and spitting and her floundering on the floor, 
would doubtless have satisfied the original Times reviewer, 
who gleefully reported that "Mr. Lunt manhandles Miss 
Fontanne in the most outrageous manner." There is also a 
fine performance from Edward Petherbridge as a benign voyeur 
who says wise things in an annoyingly disdainful way. But he 
has no obvious function in the plot; and awaits fuller 
treatment by Somerset Maugham, the writer to whom the play 
(along with the rain ominously pounding the hotel roof) is 
dedicated.

"Not quite good enough" then; but a genuine curio, boldly 
revived, and suggestive. Who knows - if the critics of 1935 
had been more encouraging, Coward's muse might have taken 
off in strange, surprising directions.



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