REVIEW: Quartet - Gold Coast Little Theatre

Quartet

Presented by: Gold Coast Little Theatre

Date Attended: 6 September 2026

Written by: Ronald Harwood

Directed by: Kate Peters OAM

Set and Lighting Design: Michael Sutton

Music Consultant: Kirri Adams

Projection: Sean Curran

Sound Design: Andrew Borg and Thomas Bell

Costume Design: Shirley Whitehouse

Stage Manager: Donna McNish

Photography: TTL Photography

“Art is meaningless if it does not make you feel.”

Welcome to Quartet, where growing old may bring dodgy knees, failing memories, and an increasing awareness of mortality, but it certainly hasn’t killed the music! And let’s just say the opening line had the Gold Coast Little Theatre audience gasping, giggling, and clutching their imaginary pearls!

Ronald Harwood’s four-hander follows former opera singers Reggie, Wilfred, Cissy, and Jean, now living in a British retirement home. They fill their days reading, listening to music, reminiscing, getting on each other’s nerves, and arguing over what constitutes good art. “Art which is popular is not always good and art which is good is not always popular,” Reggie insists.

Reginald is the gentlemanly fellow, Wilfred has a libido that could rival a teenager’s, Cissy is happily off with the fairies, and Jean is the newcomer diva (and Reggie’s ex-wife). Together, they form a retirement-home clique with one golden rule: NSP. No Self Pity.

Director Kate Peters OAM has gathered four lovely, natural performers who rattle through Harwood’s hefty dialogue like they’re swapping juicy gossip. They play a group of pals who happily skip the “How’s your day?” chit-chat and dive straight into squabbles, sex talk, old grudges, and teasing, with the occasional attempt at comfort. These are people who once had careers as big as their egos, now lounging on pink sofas and reliving their glory days.

Peter Gray as Reggie is the most outwardly composed member of the quartet: neatly dressed, articulate, and comparatively sensible. His history with Jean is an obvious major intrusion on his peace, though he attempts to handle her arrival with dignity. Reggie does, however, possess one magnificently disproportionate grievance: the home’s “wardress” and her apparent policy against marmalade. His sudden fury over breakfast preserves is wonderfully incongruous coming from an otherwise measured gentleman. He can survive the collapse of his marriage and the end of an operatic career, but breakfast bureaucracy is where he draws the line.

Grant Ebeling as Wilfred has fewer reservations about discussing women, sex, and the various indignities his ageing body now inflicts upon him. The audience at this performance was predominantly retirement-age, and his catalogue of complaints produced a steady soundtrack of knowing chuckles and murmured agreement around me, particularly when he declared them all “decrepit”. His body may have slowed him down, but his libido received no such memo!

Lee Patterson as Cissy is absolute sweetheart. She’s sunny, distractible, enamoured with the gardener, and equipped with a handbag seemingly capable of producing whatever she requires. Patterson also turns the simple business of Cissy getting herself off the sofa into a recurring physical gag. Every attempt is a small expedition. There’s sadness underneath her absent-mindedness too. This is a home where residents who become too unwell can simply disappear from the familiar social circle. “We repeat ourselves in the opera all the time!” she protests, neatly finding a professional excuse for one of old age’s less welcome habits.

Laney McLean as Jean is horrified to find herself entering the same retirement home as her former colleagues. While the others have settled into routines, Jean is having a bit of a meltdown about her new digs, grappling with the humiliation she associates with ageing and the uncomfortable distance between the woman she is now and the famous soprano she remembers. She admits, “I revere the person I once was.” But McLean brings considerable warmth to Jean beneath the character’s pride. Her early discomfort is palpable as she surveys what is now her home, and McLean lets us see how much of Jean’s resistance comes from fear. Asked to reunite with Reggie, Cissy, and Wilfred to perform the quartet from Verdi’s Rigoletto at the home’s annual gala, Jean refuses, explaining, “My gift deserted me.”

Music still surrounds all these characters. Designer Michael Sutton’s grand music room is packed with ornate furniture, portraits of musicians, books, flowers, a gramophone, harp, piano, and vinyls/CDs, with Sean Curran’s projected garden stretching beyond the central windows. Within this beautiful environment, however, the play can be rather static. With four characters, one principal room, and long stretches of conversation, there is inevitably a great deal of sitting.

Harwood also asks his actors to sustain some hefty passages of dialogue. Reggie and Jean’s catch-up, in particular, has years of history to squeeze into one exchange, and the script starts to feel its length. There were a few moments when the actors appeared to be searching for the next line, with occasional prompting required (totally understandable!) There were also a few technical hiccups, most memorably when the microphones suddenly blew out together, a noise so loud it appeared to take five years off everyone in the auditorium. We survived, though, and the cast recovered quickly.

The Verdi gala brings a dramatic change of wardrobe from costume designer Shirley Whitehouse, with satin, puffed sleeves, elaborate gowns, and a hunchbacked jester transforming the residents back into theatrical creatures for the occasion.

Quartet doesn’t pretend ageing is painless. Harwood’s characters resent their dodgy bodies, failing memories, lost careers, and the uncomfortable knowledge of what comes next. But these four aren’t saintly old dears waiting peacefully for the heavenly choir. They may have retired from performing, but they haven’t stopped being performers, with all the ego, pride, insecurity, and theatricality that comes with it. And as Jean and her fellow musicians know better than most, the performance doesn’t have to be over just because you can’t hit the notes you once could.