by Noël Coward
Directed by Cedric Messina
Produced by Rosemary Hill
BBC 2 Playhouse Broadcast Wednesday, 7 July 1982
From The Noël Coward Collection DVD box set (BBC)
CAST:
Verner Conklin- Paul Scofield
Anne-Mary Conklin -Toby Robins
Maud Caragnani – Geraldine McEwan
Felix – Bruce Lidington
Come Into The Garden, Maud is from Coward’s trilogy, Suite in Three Keys. All three plays take place in the same hotel suite in Lausanne, Switzerland. There are two one act plays, and this and Shadows of The Evening were performed together, with a full length one, A Song At Twilight, as a different performance. It was performed in London in 1966 with Noël Coward playing the three lead roles – that was the idea of the trilogy: one cast for three plays. He had written it to be his final stage performance. The play was produced again a year after his death, as Suite in Two Keys (dropping Shadows of The Evening) in New York in 1974. Our attention was taken because the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond is producing the trilogy for 2024.
This BBC production dates from 1982. Cedric Messina switches from producer to director. It was broadcast on a Wednesday night, with the other play on the Friday. Usually the glossy famous actor productions tended to Christmas week and bank holidays, but not these two. Odd, July tended to repeats and throwaways as the TV audience dwindled in warm weather. We wouldn’t have seen them and it was a child’s birthday on that Friday, with fun and games in the garden.
The plot, roughly. An American couple, Verner and Anne-Mary Conklin, are on a five month tour of Europe. They are bickering away, with comments on Europe and the annoying habit Continental Europeans have of gabbling away in foreign languages. They’re right. I’ve noticed it myself. Anne-Mary has problems with the “Avian” water and complains.
Anne-Mary: I don’t speak a word of Eye-talian and the sooner the staff of this hotel realises this, the better it will be for all concerned.
Felix: Va Bene, signora.
Anne-Mary: Are you being impertinent?
Impertinent is a carefully chosen word. You are impertinent to your superiors and betters. Adults are simply rude, or taking the piss.
Later:
Anne-Mary: It might interest you to know that Mr Conklin and I have stayed in some of the finest hotels in Europe, and when we pay the amount we do pay for the best service, we expect to get it.
No one who has ever worked in a service situation speaks like that. As A.A. Gill said, the waiting staff will say gleefully, ‘Did you see? She ate it!’
Anne-Mary (I’ve met Anne-Maries and Anna-Marias, but I’ve never met an Anne-Mary) is planning a dinner party for an unpopular prince and his new even more unpopular wife. The text indicates he’s foreign, but I reckon we know which Parisian resident and his American wife were in Coward’s mind. There is a lot of fun with Anne-Mary trying to put a phone call through via a French operator. Verner returns from playing golf. She’s worried their planned dinner party will be a failure as he forgot to get the right cigars.
Verner: Our dinner parties are never a failure. They cost too darned much.
They go for Verner as the classic hen-pecked husband, who doesn’t really give a damn:
Maud Caragnani, a Sicilian princess, pops in to visit, invited by Anne-Mary because ‘she knows everybody.’ Maud is English, but the widow of a Sicilian prince.
Anne-Mary: Princesses in Sicily are a dime a dozen.
They had met her in Rome where Verner (surely Werner?) took a liking to her and Anne-Mary did not. Anne-Mary can’t receive her in a hair net so Verner welcomes her in. There are two BBC Playhouse hallmarks here – we see her outside the room (so outside the set) pushing the bell, and Verner crosses in front of an elaborate mirror to answer the door.
Felix arrives and speaks cheerfully to Maud in Italian. She is fluent. Anne-Mary returns, and Maud mentions her son who paints abstract pictures and is ‘a communist.’ As she chatters away amusingly, Verner is entranced. Maud became a grandmother the evening before and is off to see her first grandchild.
Anne-Mary is having a famed pianist to dinner who will play. He phones to cry off. Shock and horror. They will be thirteen at dinner. The Last Supper superstition. Maud declines to make up the party, though Anne-Mary believes it more important than going to Rome.
If they can’t have fourteen, then they must have twelve. Anne-Mary decides that Verner will have to dine upstairs in the suite. She strides out to do her hair.
Verner: She sure is good and mad.
Maud: I am sorry. I’m afraid it was partly my fault (later) … what an idiotic little drama.
Verner and Maud have a drink on the balcony. This is another scene where the BBC TV production is stressing that it’s more than a stage play by going outside.
She asks an “impertinent” (that word again) question – whether he is a very rich man.
The drink scene is getting intimate. She is definitely eye-fluttering for England. She kisses him on the cheek.
Maud? Verner? Anne-Mary? A waiter called Felix? Coward’s choice of names is weird.
So in the next scene, Verner is in the suite. He’s had his room service dinner. He even tries to speak Italian to the waiter, Molte grazie. He asks Felix the waiter about himself in a friendly way, then asks about Maud. Felix declares “an enchanting lady of whom everyone is fond.” Verner tips him $50.
Then Maud phones from the lobby and asks if she can come up. He gets her just a brandy, what with her driving through the night. It was 1966. Everyone drank and drove. She calls him Buffalo Bill.
She is driving to Rome tonight in her VW (Verner Werner?) and she will say farewell. She’s very posh and sophisticated. I hope the VW is a Kharmann-Ghia, not a Beetle.
It warms up. Geraldine McEwan is ladling on the seductiveness. Paul Schofield’s reactive acting is brilliant. It’s all about closeup shots, which as in Private Lives on BBC adds a dimension to Coward.
Maud: I’m a very impulsive character – It often gets me into trouble.
They kiss:
Maud: I knew perfectly well that was going to happen, but somehow it was a surprise.
Verner: You’re sensational. I’m crazy about you.
Maud: I believe you really mean it. We’re both behaving very foolishly,
There’s seven or eight minutes screen time of this sort of thing, all beautifully played by both. Verner decides he will go to Rome with her, possibly not aware that British / Italians are sexier than he’s used to. It is truly the ‘American Adam’ and meeting the European Eve. Coward must have been reading up on classic American literary themes. She says she has ‘a past’ and Verner’s pretty worked up by now. She says she will collect him at 12.30 (it’s now 11.30 pm).
He is having a nap, or pretending to, and snoring loudly when Anne-Mary returns in a filthy temper. He then acts drunk. Toby Robins puts in a great comedy performance as Anne-Mary. I realize we’ve missed her.
She explains that she’s angry because a woman, Mariette, hogged the prince’s attention all evening. She says that she was stuck talking to the bore on her other side.
Anne-Mary: That dreadful stuffed shirt, Sir Gerard Nuffield. He’s got one of these British accents I just can’t stand. He asked me (fruity voice) “where I came from.”
The 1966 theatre would have rocked with laughter at that one, including the choice of names. Coward wasn’t thinking of performing in the Nuffield Theatre then. Verner’s acting even more drunk.
Anne-Mary: Go to your room! Take an Alka-Seltzer and order a black coffee!
She tells Verner to leave her alone. He says ‘Okay, that’s exactly what I intend to do. Goodnight, sweetheart.’ He slips quickly out of the door.
And no one says, Noël Coward, you can’t end yet another play with characters slipping out of the door holding a bag.
So overall? British actors have got(ten) better at doing convincing American accents in the last forty years. I thought Paul Scofield drifted a few times. Toby Robins’ Anne-Mary drifts to the New Joisy shore accent. Geraldine McEwan is marvellously seductive.
The American v European theme is sledgehammer. While wealthy Americans may have been like Coward’s stereotypes pre-1939, I doubt that the very rich were this blinkered by 1966. There is a ‘Private Lives- lite’ aspect to it. It’s not a great play, but good actors passed an hour (its length) pleasantly. It must be the only Noël Coward play I’ve ever seen where no one smoked. I bet they did in 1966.
NOËL COWARD ON THIS BLOG:
- Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2010 (Alison Steadman)
- Blithe Spirit, by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2019 (Jennifer Saunders)
- Blithe Spirit FILM 2021 (Judi Dench)
- Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter, by Emma Rice, Salisbury Playhouse, 2023
- Come Into The Garden, Maud, BBC 1982
- Design for Living, by Noël Coward, BBC Play Of The Month, 1979
- Fallen Angels, by Noël Coward, Salisbury Playhouse
- Hay Fever by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2016
Hay Fever, by Noël Coward, BBC TV Play 1984 - Present Laughter, by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal, 2003 Rik Mayall (retrospective)
- Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2106, Samuel West
- Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Chichester 2018, Rufus Hound
- Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Old Vic 2019, Andrew Scott
- Private Lives by Noël Coward, BBC TV 1976
- Private Lives by Noël Coward, Nigel Havers Theatre Company, 2021, Chichester
- Private Lives, by Noël Coward, Donmar Warehouse, London 2023
Relative Values by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal
This Happy Breed by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal - The Vortex, by Noël Coward, Chichester Festival Theatre 2023
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