A Song at Twilight

The play depicts an elderly writer confronted by his former mistress with facts about his past life that he would prefer to forget.

[2] 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] His co-stars in A Song at Twilight were Lilli Palmer (Carlotta), Irene Worth (Hilde) and Sean Barrett (Felix).

[3] The play was revived in 1999 for Coward's centennial in a production at the Gielgud Theatre directed by Sheridan Morley.

[4] The play then went on a UK tour in 2009 (directed by Nikolai Foster, with Peter Egan as Hugo, Belinda Lang as Carlotta, Kerry Peers as Hilde and Daniel Bayle as Felix)[5] and another in 2019 (directed by Stephen Unwin, with Simon Callow as Hugo, Jane Asher as Carlotta, Jessica Turner as Hilde and Ash Rizi as Felix.

)[6] Hilde Latymer, Sir Hugo's former secretary and for nearly twenty years his wife, discusses literary business by telephone.

The atmosphere becomes tense when Carlotta asks for Hugo's permission to reproduce some of his love letters to her in her forthcoming memoirs.

Hilde shows Carlotta out, and returns to find Hugo reading his old letters, "deeply moved... with a sigh [he] covers his eyes with a hand".

[2] The critic of The Daily Mail said, "as the curtain fell last night I felt oddly elated, as if I had recaptured the flavour of an exclusive drink which one tasted when young but has never been mixed quite right since.