Top pros to illumine Hanna stage
By Peter Bellamy De
Entertainment Enter
It's seldom-that one may see a play with as distinguished a cast as "Noel Coward in Two Keys,” which opens tomorrow night at the Hanna Theater after a triumphant season on Broadway.
With the retirement of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, it may be fairly said thai Hume Cronyn and his wife, Jessica Tandy, comprise the first family of the American theater.
Anne Baxter, the granddaughter of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, has also appeared on stage, screen and TV with distinction and, indeed, won an Academy Award for her performance in the film "The Razor's Edge.
AL
:
“Noel Coward in Two Keys," which I saw in London in 1966 with Coward, Irene Worth and Lilli Palmer, was his last play and it has been a lively subject of debate as to the inspiration of the character of its homosexual writer.
The show offers two one-act plays. The first, titled "Come Into the Garden," concerns a Texas millionaire who leaves his abrasive, snobbish wife for an Italian princess.
The second play, “A Song at Twilight," is about a novelist who has published ungallant things about a former mistress, even as the late Somerset Maugham wrote ghastly things about his late wife.
A book by Maugham's nephew also suggested other unhappy parallels to the play's central male character.
As the play opens, the novelist's old flame appears to ask permission to reprint his letters to her in her autobiography. When he refuses, she reveals that she has the love letters he had written to his male lover.
The novelist is driven nearly mad trying to discover whether she is motivated by jealousy, revenge or thoughts of blackmail.
To the accompaniment of many bright and vintage Coward lines, the former mistress turns the writer on a conversational spit like a barbecuing beef.
Coward was coy when it came to discussing upon whom the homosexual character was based.
"I'm getting tired of saying it's not Somerset Maugham, dear old Willie," Coward said. "Certainly, the character is a well known writer. And he is a homosexual. But there has been more than one wellknown writer who was a homosexual.
The idea for the play, in fact, came from an incident involving Max Beerbohm. And although he was friendly with Oscar Wilde and that set, he was never a homosexual, as far as I know.
"The point is that I never drew characters straight from life-that would have been unimaginitive and vulgar. They are composites and partly autobiographical. There is something of me in all of them. In 'Private Lives,' for example, the man and the woman were both a bit of me.”
Cronyn is certain that the charácter of the novelist is based on Maugham, as; is this writer.
"There were fairly specific references to Maugham in the original play, but Coward got nervous about them during rehearsals and removed them," Cronyn said.
"In the play the novelist says, 'My autobiography was the summing up of the events of my life.' The title of Maugham's autobiography was 'The Summing Up.'
"In reference to films, Coward's novelist says:
"Ive had three of my novels and five of my best. short stories massacred by that cretinous medium.' That was also Maugham's attitude towards the screen."
Cronyn, whose range of interests would classify him as "A Man For All Seasons postponed a tele phone interview with this writer for an interesting
reason.
"Perhaps I shouldn't tell you this," he said, “but the reason I postponed the interview was because I had a chance to go bird watching at Easton, Md.,. with a party which included Sir Peter Scott, a world famous ornithologist and painter of wildlife.
-
"Sir Peter, who was brought over here to receive the gold medal of the New York Zoological Society, is the son of Robert F. Scott, the noted Antarctic explorer who perished with other members of his expedition after an heroic struggle to return to their base camp after reaching the South Pole in 1912.
•
"During an eight-month tour, Jessie and I get only three or four days off and. since it was a lovely day in the country, I couldn't resist the temptation to Continued on Page 6-H
tomorrow night
the plain dealer
stage ✰
screen
sunday, march 16, 1975
AOR
Hume Cronyn, Anne Bar-
ter and Jessica Tandy (from left) are the triplethreat stars of “Noel Cow-
ard in Two Keys," which opens a week's engagement at the Hanna Theater tomorrow night.
Warren Beatty is a swinging hairdresser and Julie Christie one of his loves in the adult drama "Shampoo," due to open Wednesday at Loew's East. West. Yorktown. Stillwell and Great Lakes Mall theaters.