Quartet

In an age that’s obsessed with youth culture it’s a pleasure to welcome Quartet, a well-made West End play with elderly characters that unashamedly entertains. Set in a retirement home for opera singers, musicians, and their like, Ronald Harwood’s play about mortality and the loss of one’s skills as one ages, resonates with confronting reality.

Three former opera stars, Reginald Paget, who just wants a quiet life contemplating Art, Cecily (“Cissy”) Robson, a woman of ample girth who is showing early signs of senility, and Wilfred Bond, who’s obsessed with sex and of having it with Cissy, are preparing for the home’s annual concert to honour Giuseppe Verdi’s birthday, or as he’s called in the English translation in the play Joe Green.

Into the mix arrives former diva Jean Horton, an operatic star of the first magnitude who has fallen on hard times thanks to a bad marriage. She resents her new station in life, and to make matters worse, one of her former husbands was Reggie. The concert party want her to repeat with them their most acclaimed vocal performance, the third-act quartet from Rigoletto, but Jean adamantly refuses. How they persuade her forms the basis of the work where old animosities and slights are picked at like weeping wounds. The actors adroitly stumbled their way around this minefield of memory loss and bruised egos whilst delivering Harwood’s acutely wry dialogue which was not short of a laugh or two.

Kate Wilson’s grand-diva Jean was tactless and overbearing but at times allowed us to see a hint of warmth in this self-obsessed character. Christine Amor’s Cissie was daffy and delightfully away with the pixies most of the time, whilst Andrew McFarlane’s Reggie appeared to revel in his uncontrollable bursts of pettiness, especially when he didn’t get marmalade on his toast at breakfast. Trevor Stuart’s lascivious dirty-talking Wilfred was a large comic performance. He never missed a laugh and got the biggest of them all with his first-act curtain “lunch”.

Bruce McKinvan’s music-room set was opulent and grand as were his opera costumes, with David Walters’ lighting and Tony Brumpton’s sound adding to the atmosphere. Everyone deserved a bouquet of roses with the biggest reserved for Andrea Moor’s energetic direction.

QTC dedicated this production to actress Carol Burns, who, prior to her recent death was to have appeared in it. It was a fitting tribute to the beloved performer.

Peter Pinne