Theater

COWARD OPENS CLOSET

NOEL COWARD IN TWO KEYS A.C.T. (Geary Theatre, S.F.) Review by JAMES ARMSTRONG

Two Keys is two-thirds of Suite In Three Keys, a trilogy unified by the setting (a posh suite in a posh Swiss hotel), the waiter (Felix, played by Joel Parks), and the same three stars appearing in each play. (In the original, a few years back, this was Coward's last major work-these were Irene Worth, Lilli Palmer, and Mr. Coward. The director was the same, Vivian Matalon.) Further, they are all writ to be played by middle-aged (at least) actors, and all center on characters corrupted to the core by wealth and/or success. The first, Come Into the Garden Maud, has amusing moments and a line or two, but is purest cliche and hackword. The second, A Song at Twilight, is a minor masterpiece of crackling Cowardian wit with a display of ensemble acting unmatched in these parts since the Lunts were here God knows how many years back with Durrenmatt's The Visit. Those who see it will never forget it.

Song is a drawing-room melodrama of character, its validity as perfect as its intensity. It was an actors' feast, and with these three superb pros gobbled it up and let us have it, right between the eyes. The monster in this one is an elderly writer of international renown, Hugo Latymer, married to a younger, former secretary, Hilde (Jessica Tandy). As the play opens, Hilde is going to dine with an old friend, leaving Hugo to give dinner a deux to Carlotta, his mistress of 30 years ago, more or less at her behest. Why she wants to see him is a mystery. Their affair ended acrimoniously, they have not communicated since. She has been a successful actress and has buried three rich husbands, so it can't be money she wants.

She arrives, a beauty holding age at bay in her face though it shows in her subtly curving spine. After some increasingly acidulous badinage, it develops she has written her memoirs and wants Hugo's permission to print some of his loveletters. He refuses: violently, insultingly. The quarrel is ghastly. He all but throws

Anne Baxter as Carlotta

her out. She is almost through the door (this is stock theatre, but oh how it works! when: "Oh, by the way..." She has other letters, written by Hugo to the only person he ever truly loved-a male secretary he cruelly abandoned, neglected, and let die alone and in want. Curtain. In the second scene, he summons her back, and the sparring continued. What does she want? She really doesn't know, beyond a vague desire to punish and perhaps make Hugo see what he is. Hilde returns, realizes, and joins in. She has long known of his homosexuality, even of the abandoned lover. Her view of Hugo is devastatingly clear and precise, but even so, her loyalty is impregnable. As the play progresses, Hugo's armor of heartlessness is riddled and collapses. He is made to know his monstrosity, that only Hilde likes or respects him, that all is his own doing, the handiwork of selfish fear. The women are alternately at his throat and at each others'.

It is a masterfully orchestrated trio of wills, egos and motivations, circling probing, stabbing. They blaze at one another, die down again to attack from another quarter. For all the violence of many of the exchanges, flaming carnage of wit, the acting is based on nuance. Everyone has not one but several climaxes, and it was a joy to perceive how they fed and bolstered one another in them, how superbly they worked always as a team.

Hume Cronyn & Anne Baxter God, what theatre!

Tandy, as Hilde, employed a German accent and manner of breathless perfection, her projection of strength and compassion in the face of Hugo's beastliness was at times heartbreaking. Cronin's Hugo was the realization of a heartless, vicious, power-mad success, hag-ridden that his "secret life" might destroy his carefully achieved reputation. Till the day he died Mr. Coward denied that Hugo was modeled on Somerset Maugham.

Despite all this, however, Baxter, as Carlotta, walked off with this one. Superbly made up as a thrice-face-lifted beauty of 65, her old-lady spine never straightened and she employed her eyes and that low voice in a manner inevitably reminiscent of Tallulah Bankhead giving a performance such as Tallulah was never allowed to give in her later years. (Having become a camp-figure, she was laughed at; never taken seriously.)

This is an evening not to be missed. The more so since the like of it will not come to San Francisco again for some time. Lucky Los Angeles will be able to catch it soon at the Huntington Hartford Theater..

James Armstrong is the San Francisco correspondent for AFTER DARK and has published broadly in several national publications.

VECTOR 21