Quartet poster
Yesterday was the summer solstice (link below). Because it is the longest it is my favorite day of the year and I celebrated it one way or another each year; this time by attending a marvelous performance of Quartet, a 1999 play about aging opera singers by South African-born British author, playwright, and screenwriter, Ronald Harwood.
The setting is a retirement home for musicians. It opens with three former
opera-singers, who worked together, sitting and talking. Reginald quietly reads a book, while Wilfred constantly makes erotic innuendos as he regards Cissy who is lying back and listening to music through her headphones. They are joined by Jean, who was a major star in her day and to whom Reginald was once unhappily and briefly married. All struggling to deal with the problems and realities of growing old.
A gala concert is about to take place at the retirement home to celebrate the birthday of Giuseppe Verdi. Three of them are keen to recreate the third act quartet Bella figlia dell'amore from Rigoletto but Jean is not; the action involves convincing her to join in the quartet with hilarious incidents. The play concludes as Reginald and Jean have reconciled and the four are costumed and lip-synch to their own retro
recording. The result is charming and I had a most enjoyable solstice!
The show’s director, Stephanie Singer, is an actor, director, and an acting and improv teacher. She directed the 2023 multimedia musical play JFK a Remembrance at the Rossmoor Event Center and recently directed Doubt (link below) at the Town Hall Theaterr in Moraga.
Stephanie Singer - Director
photo by Styrous®
The play features Tom Cassese, Neil Fiore, Lee Gale Gruen, Edward Kimak and Jean Wilcox. It closes today, June 22 with a matinee performance.
photographer unknown
Edward Kimak is delightful as the sexually obsessed and lecherous Wilfred!
photo by Styrous®
Dustin Hoffman said that Ronald Harwood was inspired by the 1984 documentary Tosca's Kiss (about Casa di Riposa the world's first nursing home for retired opera singers, founded in 1896 in Milan by composer Giuseppe Verdi) to write the original play and subsequent film (link below) on which Quartet is based.
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