Plot
The setting is a retirement home for musicians. Three elderly former opera-singers, who often worked together, are sitting out on the terrace. Reginald, played by Alec McCowen, is quietly reading a serious book, but Donald Sinden’s jovial, priapic Wilfred is chuckling about sex, as he regards Cissy (Stephanie Cole), lying back and listening to music through her headphones.
They are about to be joined by newcomer Jean, played by Angela Thorne, a major star in her day and to whom Reginald was once unhappily married.
Is there any chance that these four will ever sing together again? A gala concert is about to take place at the retirement home to celebrate Verdi’s birthday. Three of the four are keen to recreate the third act quartet from Rigoletto and one isn’t. But the play eventually moves to an uncertain conclusion when they don costumes and lip-synch to their own retro recording.
Read more about this topic: Quartet (Harwood)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)