Quartet, review - Telegraph Beecham's tasteful hallways and immaculate grounds resound with music, which Hoffman shows us in a prologue in which the various residents sing and play along to the Brindisi from Verdi's la Traviata. For added authenticity, and poignancy, Hoffman has peopled his supporting cast with real long-serving performers. Life, for the most part, concludes here in harmonious balance. Or it does at least until the arrival of famed soprano Jean Horton (Smith), who crunches up the driveway and into the hall in the kind of high dudgeon no actress takes higher than Dame Maggie. ("There's a chairlift up to your room," offers the in-house medic, Dr Cogan (Sheridan Smith). What do I do when I get to the top? Ski down?" she snaps.) Jean chose career over family, and she has gone into her autumnal years with little but her old LPs and programmes to show for it. One man she left behind was Reginald Paget (Courtenay): a former co-star, and worse, husband. Reggie, a knot of cravats and regrets, bridles at his ex-lover's appearance. But a fund-raising concert that would greatly benefit from Jean's presence is drawing near, and so Reggie and his fellow vocalists, rascally Wilf (Connolly) and dotty Cissy (Collins), try to convince her to join them for a historic reunion gig. These four roles fit Hoffman's own quartet of leads as cosily as old cardigans. Harwood adapted his script with this particular cast in mind, and his dialogue has a warm, conversational ring. Connolly's lines are seasoned with comic ad libs that flow so naturally I suspect the laughter from the other residents is genuine, and when Reggie gives an opera lecture to a group of teenagers, Courtenay enunciates the name "Lady GaGa" as if he found it in Burke's Peerage. As the film trundles onwards, the putting-on-a-show premise drowns out other ideas that might have have upped the oomph somewhat, although Sheridan Smith has a beautifully underplayed moment near the end when she describes the everyday pleasures of her work. There's a gentle, sugared honesty in Quartet about old age: it stops short of anything too testing or tragic. This is a lot closer to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) than it is to Amour (2012), and the only final curtain here is made of heavy, red velvet.