Twilight Song Bryony Hannah (Isabella), Philip Bretherton (Harry), Hugh Ross (Charles) & Paul Higgins (Basil)(c) Robert Workman
Walk into an old house and someone is bound to say “Oh, if only these walls could talk”. So much happens over the course of the lifetime in a house that there are always going to be stories and secrets hidden in its history. This is probably even truer if the same family has inhabited that property for half a century or more. Thus then, we have the backdrop for Kevin Elyot’s final play, Twilight Song which is receiving its world premiere at the Park Theatre.
In a North London Victorian Villa, the owner Barry (Paul Higgins) is showing a local estate agent Skinner (Adam Garcia) around. Barry has recently retired and is looking at getting a valuation whilst his mother Isabella (Bryony Hannah) is at an appointment in Dunstable. The two men chat and discuss the financial state of the world and, particularly Skinner’s rather unusual way of making a bit of extra money. A method that appeals to Barry, a lot.
We now go back to 1961 and Isabella along with husband Basil (Paul Higgins) have just moved into the house, thanks in no small part to uncle Charles (Hugh Ross) who has helped with the necessary readies. The three of them are going out for dinner tonight along with family friend Harry (Philip Bretherton). As they are getting ready, they admire the work being done outside by the handsome gardener (Adam Garcia) Harry found for them. Whilst Isabella and Basil go to finish getting their things on, Charles and Harry talk in the sitting room. They are obviously old friends who have shared many things together over the years. The friendship is, however, getting strained and Charles doesn’t really understand why. Could it be Harry’s son Monty, or is it the influence of something more sinister that has caused the dynamic to change?
Forward now to 1967 and a pregnant Isabella has just broken some unexpected news to her husband. Isabella is waiting for a reaction from Basil but none is forthcoming when the doorbell rings and Charles comes in. He too has upsetting news and is seeking solace from Isabella, and the two of them hug as they try to make sense of their lives.
I do quite like time travel plays, where you start with now and then go back to see how you got to that point. In that respect, Twilight Song works very well, as we see how a gardener hearing a nightingale in 1961 changes the course of everyone’s life and still has repercussions over fifty years later. There is a lot of laughter, particularly in the first scene with Barry and Skinner, and a great deal of innuendo and subtext throughout the writing which means the audience have to be concentrating throughout the roughly 75 minutes run. However, I did find much of the conversation to be rather stilted in a rather old fashioned British way reminiscent of a 1950s Ealing Studios melodrama. This was fine in the scenes set in the sixties when I assume the English middle classes still talked in that fashion but didn’t feel quite right in the ‘modern day’ scenes.
The cast were really good throughout and I was very impressed with Bryony Hannah as Isabella who changed both physically and vocally between 1961 and now. James Cotterill’s set worked nicely and Director Anthony Banks kept things moving, with the scene changes being accompanied by some great music. Actually, on sound Ben and Max Ringham should be applauded for not only getting strange sounds – like the fridge on the fritz – right, but also in the right place in the theatre, no mean feat.
Overall, though I found I didn’t really connect with any of the characters. Everyone’s experience of life is difference but as a formerly extremely well closeted gay man myself, I didn’t really find the various gay men that believable I’m afraid. The overall story was interesting from a historical perspective but it just wasn’t my thing. I’ve not seen any of Kevin Elyot’s other plays so can’t really say if this is a good example of his writing or not. For me, overall it didn’t work but if you are a fan of of the writer, then Twilight Song should really be on your list to go and see.
Dawid Minnar Janine Ulfane – Photograher credit Alixandra Fazzina. “Survival of the fittest” is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. Which means that even in the most inhospitable of placers, life will find a way – even if at times, you may look and think what’s the point? For example, in South Africa, the aloe plant is considered one of the country’s most powerful, beautiful and celebratory symbols. It survives out in the wild when everything else is dried. At the end of everything, the aloe is still there. And it is this survival that is at the heart of Athol Fugard’s A Lesson From Aloes which has returned to the UK and is currently in residence at the Finborough Theatre. Set in South Africa in 1963, where apartheid is at its height and the citizens are living in a paranoid police state. The play revolves around a middle-aged left-leaning couple – Afrikaner Piet Bezuidenhout (Dawid Minnaar) and hi
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