Come Into the Garden, Maud (play)
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Come Into the Garden, Maud is a comedy, one of the trilogy of plays by Noël Coward known collectively as Suite in Three Keys. The other two, A Song at Twilight and Shadows of the Evening are more serious in tone. All three plays are set in the same suite in a luxury hotel in Switzerland.
The play depicts a middle-aged American couple. The wife is querulous and domineering, the husband philosophical. He finds comfort in the kindness of a widow they have recently met, and at the end of the play he leaves his wife for her. The play debuted in London's West End in 1966, starring Coward, and was performed on Broadway in 1974.
Suite in Three Keys was planned by Coward as his theatrical swan song: "I would like to act once more before I fold my bedraggled wings."[1] Coward's previous play, Waiting in the Wings (1960), had not been a critical success, but the climate of opinion had changed in the intervening six years, and Coward's works had undergone a period of rediscovery and re-evaluation, which Coward called "Dad's Renaissance".[2] This had begun with a successful 1963 revival of Private Lives at the Hampstead Theatre and continued with a 1964 production of Hay Fever at the National Theatre;[3] in that year The New Statesman called him "demonstrably the greatest living English playwright".[4]
Coward wrote the three plays in the expectation that Margaret Leighton would be his co-star, but she vacillated for so long about accepting the roles that he cast Lilli Palmer instead.[5] In each of the plays there are two main female parts, and Coward chose Irene Worth for the second role: "She isn't quite a star but she's a bloody good actress. … I wish one didn't always yearn for Gertie!"[6][n 1]
Come Into the Garden, Maud opened at the Queen's Theatre, London, on 25 April 1966 as the second half of a double-bill with Shadows of the Evening.[8] Both were directed by Vivian Matalon.[9] The trilogy ran in repertory for a limited season, ending on 30 July.[10] There were 60 performances of Come Into the Garden, Maud.[8]
Coward had intended to appear in the trilogy on Broadway, but his health was deteriorating, and he was unable to do so. In 1974, a year after his death, Come Into the Garden, Maud and A Song at Twilight were presented in a double-bill, featuring Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy and Anne Baxter. After a ten-week tour the production opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, where it ran for 140 performances.[11]
Roles and original casts
| London | New York | |
|---|---|---|
| Anne-Mary Conklin | Irene Worth | Jessica Tandy |
| Felix, a waiter | Sean Barrett | Thom Christopher |
| Verner Conklin | Noël Coward | Hume Cronyn |
| Maud Caragnani | Lilli Palmer | Anne Baxter |