Quartet (Harwood)

"Quartet" is a play by Ronald Harwood about ageing opera singers.

The play, presented by Michael Codron, was first staged by Christopher Morahan at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford prior to its West End opening at the Albery Theatre on 8 September 1999.

Following a four-month run it closed on 8 January 2000.

Plot

The setting is a retirement home for musicians. Three elderly former opera-singers, who often worked together, are sitting out on the terrace. Reginald, played by Alec McCowen is quietly reading a serious book, but Donald Sinden’s jovial, priapic Wilfred is chuckling about sex, as he regards Cissy (Stephanie Cole), lying back and listening to music through her headphones.

They are about to be joined by newcomer Jean, played by Angela Thorne, a major star in her day and to whom Reginald was once unhappily married.

Is there any chance that these four will ever sing together again? A gala concert is about to take place at the retirement home to celebrate Verdi’s birthday. Three of the four are keen to recreate the third act quartet from Rigoletto and one isn’t. But the play eventually moves to an uncertain conclusion when they don costumes and lip-synch to their own retro recording.

Critical reaction

Writing for The Independent [The Independent 10 September 1999] Paul Taylor described the play as “an unashamed — no, shameless — vehicle for four feisty old troupers whose task is to make us laugh a little, sigh a little and cry a little as they take us into the bittersweet world of facing up to age and mortality.”

Charles Spencer (journalist) for the Daily Telegraph [Daily Telegraph 10 September 1999] wrote: “...the show’s heart is in the right place and a cherishable company of senior thesps give it everything they’ve got, breathing vitality into a script that could be an inert embarrassment if performed by less accomplished players.”

Reviewing the play for The Spectator [The Spectator 18 September 1999] , Sheridan Morley concluded: “Harwood seems to have set out with something sad to say about the ravages of age on a profession which largely depends on staying young, but then to have been sidetracked into a sort of Three Tenors concert celebration without the Three Tenors. So his play doesn’t end, it just stops, and we are left with nothing more than the memory of four performances desperately trying to make bricks despite a distinct lack of straw; if Harwood has anything new to tell us about singers who have for different reasons lost their voices and yet are now going unquietly into that good night, he seems like his characters to have abruptly and irretrievably forgotten what he was going to say. And the rest is a kind of silence.”

References

Theatre Record, volume XIX, 1999.