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''A Song at Twilight'' is a play in two acts by Noël Coward. It is one of a trio of plays collectively entitled ''Suite in Three Keys'', all of which are set in the same suite in a luxury hotel in Switzerland. The play depicts an elderly writer confronted by his former mistress with facts about his past life that he would prefer to forget. First produced in 1966, the play is one of Coward's last works for the stage. ==Background and productions== The original idea for ''A Song at Twilight'' was inspired by Lord David Cecil's biography of Max Beerbohm, in which Cecil described Constance Collier's late-life visit to Beerbohm at his home in Italy. Coward said, "I thought how funny this was. There was Max's old flame coming to visit him, but so much more vital still than him that she totally exhausted him in seconds."〔 Coward developed this by making his author a closeted homosexual, whose relations with women have been mainly for camouflage. Many people took the character to be based on Somerset Maugham,〔 and Coward's stage make up was thought to underline the point by its "curious" resemblance to Maugham.〔 The play was first produced at the Queen's Theatre, London on 14 April 1966, directed by Vivian Matalon.〔"Noël Coward's Skeleton Feast", ''The Times'', 15 April 1966, p. 16〕 ''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."〔Coward, introduction, unnumbered page.〕 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". This had begun with a successful revival of ''Private Lives'' at the Hampstead Theatre and continued with a new production of ''Hay Fever'' at the National Theatre.〔 The play was revived in 1999 for Coward's centennial in a production at the Gielgud Theatre directed by Sheridan Morley. The cast included Vanessa Redgrave as Carlotta, Kika Markham as Hilde, Corin Redgrave as Hugo and Matthew Bose as Felix.〔("''Song at Twilight''" ), TheatreMania, accessed 8 June 2013〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「A Song at Twilight」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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