Quartet, Birmingham Rep - review
Promoted in advance as a gentle comedy about behaving disgracefully in your twilight years, I suspect that there were more than a few in last night’s Rep audience for whom the play was merely a statement of fact about the perils of ageing.
There’s Cecily,played by Coronation Street's Wendi Peters, hampered by both dementia and arthritis, who insists on asking everyone she meets how they are now that they've returned from somewhere on the Indian sub-continent.
Paul Nicholas, looking considerably older than on his recent television appearance in The Real Marigold Hotel, portrayed as a youthful-thinking old lecher, while Jeff Rawle, with a lifetime list of successful theatre and television credits to his name, is a tangle of unhappy relationships.
Sue Holderness, star of Only Fools and Horses and the Green, Green Grass, gives us a difficult diva with a gammy hip.
The plot contrives to bring these residents of the Beecham Home for Retired Musicians, and Jean who has only just arrived, together for a performance of the Quartet from Verdi’s Rigoletto on the composer’s birthday to raise funds for the home.
Ronald Harwood’s script has some amusing lines and observations about growing old in general, but some of the punch-lines are delivered too quickly to make the point.
Peter Rowe’s production moves merrily along, although there is a slowing of pace in the last half-hour which lets some of the tension slacken a little.
However, the four principal actors give a very polished performances and create very sympathetic characters.
We learn as the drama progresses that Cecily was once the company bike, orphaned at an early age, and never managed to marry and have children.
Jean was once an international star, but had given up singing after a post-natal traumatic incident led to her losing her voice completely. Wilfred was, and still is, an inveterate dirty old man who has no intention of changing his ways. And Reggie, once married to Jean for nine hours, has never found emotional stability.
Some of the effects of ageing are overlooked, such as why people can remember every detail of their wedding days fifty years ago, but can’t remember what they had for breakfast that morning. And all the ills that befall prostates, bladders and other bodily parts are equally glossed over.
But this is basically an affectionate look at the ageing process which declares you are what you are and you should continue to do what you like for as long as you can.
Quartet plays at the REP until Match 10.
By Jerald Smith
