Noel Coward Collected Plays: THREE: 3

Product Information

Rosemary Harris / Marin Mazzie / Terrence McNally / Sonny Tilders and Creature Technology Company / Jason Michael Webb / Harold Wheeler (2019) Richard Burton, newly married to Elizabeth Taylor, is to play the title role in an experimental new production of Hamlet under John Gielgud’s exacting direction. But as rehearsals progress, two ages of theatre collide and the collaboration between actor and director soon threatens tounravel. Hay Fever opened at the Ambassadors Theatre on 8 June 1925, directed by Coward, and transferred to the larger Criterion Theatre on 7 September 1925; it ran for 337 performances. [15] Coward remembered in 1964 that the notices "were amiable and well-disposed although far from effusive. It was noted, as indeed it has been today, that the play had no plot and that there were few if any 'witty' lines." [16] Hay Fever opened the same year at the Maxine Elliott Theatre in New York; the star, Laura Hope Crews, was accused of over-acting, [n 3] not all the supporting cast were competent, and the production closed after 49 performances. [18] Fiddler on the Roof / Ethel Merman / Richard Rodgers / The Theatre Guild-American Theatre Society (1972) James, Elliot (2020). The Importance of Happiness: Noël Coward and the Actors' Orphanage. UK: Troubador Publishing. ISBN 9781800460416.

In a study of Coward's plays, published in 1982, John Lahr called Hay Fever "the first and the finest of his major plays". [65] In 2014 Michael Billington wrote of a new production: "I found myself wondering why, 90 years after it was written, Noël Coward's comedy still proves so astonishingly durable. I suspect it is because it combines astute observation with ironclad technique". [66] Adaptations [ edit ] The exhausting thing [for him was] having to perform Noël Coward all the time," suggests Barnaby Thompson, director of the documentary Mad About the Boy. "I assumed he grew up in a nice family, had a good education… then we find out he left school at nine? He was a child actor, and entirely self-educated. So you've got a guy who, from nowhere, created this incredible persona that ended up defining the modern Englishman." During the 1930s, once he was established by his early successes, Coward experimented with theatrical forms. The historical epic Cavalcade (1931) with its huge cast, and the cycle of ten short plays Tonight at 8.30 (1935), played to full houses, but are difficult to revive because of the expense and "logistical complexities" of staging them. [168] He continued to push the boundaries of social acceptability in the 1930s: Design for Living (1932), with its bisexual triangle, had to be premiered in the US, beyond the reach of the British censor. [167] Chothia comments that a feature of Coward's plays of the 1920s and 30s is that, "unusually for the period, the women in Coward's plays are at least as self-assertive as the men, and as likely to seethe with desire or rage, so that courtship and the battle of the sexes is waged on strictly equal terms". [167] [n 13]He soon became more cautious about overdoing the flamboyance, advising Cecil Beaton to tone down his outfits: "It is important not to let the public have a loophole to lampoon you." [159] However, Coward was happy to generate publicity from his lifestyle. [160] In 1969 he told Time magazine, "I acted up like crazy. I did everything that was expected of me. Part of the job." Time concluded, "Coward's greatest single gift has not been writing or composing, not acting or directing, but projecting a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise." [1]

The older members of the family discuss a letter they have received from Queenie in France. They are interrupted by the news that Reg and his wife have been killed in a road accident. The story of the play concerns the lower middle-class [1] [2] Gibbons family between the end of World War I and the outbreak of World War II. It anticipates the non-violent ways in which social justice issues might be incorporated into post-war national reconstruction, examines the personal trauma caused by the sudden death of sons and daughters and anticipates the forthcoming return of English men from the war. It is also an intimate portrait of the economy and politics of Great Britain in the 1920s and 1930s (such as the General Strike of 1926), as well as showing the advances in technology – the arrival of primitive crystal radio sets and telephones, home gas lights being replaced by electricity and mass broadcast radio. Gaye, Freda, ed. (1967). Who's Who in the Theatre (fourteenthed.). London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons. OCLC 5997224. The theatre must be treated with respect. It is a house of strange enchantment, a temple of dreams. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, ill-lit drill hall serving as a temporary soap-box for political propaganda. [146] All that does mean that even though you are the most successful person in the world, you never rest easy," posits Thompson. "I think he felt like an outsider more or less his whole life."Cheryl Crawford / Equity Liberty Theatre / Barry Manilow / National Theatre of the Deaf / Diana Ross / Lily Tomlin (1977) During the 1950s and 1960s Coward continued to write musicals and plays. After the Ball, his 1953 adaptation of Lady Windermere's Fan, was the last musical he premiered in the West End; his last two musicals were first produced on Broadway. Sail Away (1961), set on a luxury cruise liner, was Coward's most successful post-war musical, with productions in America, Britain and Australia. [96] The Girl Who Came to Supper, a musical adaptation of The Sleeping Prince (1963), ran for only three months. [97] He directed the successful 1964 Broadway musical adaptation of Blithe Spirit, called High Spirits. Coward's late plays include a farce, Look After Lulu! (1959), and a tragi-comic study of old age, Waiting in the Wings (1960), both of which were successful despite "critical disdain". [98] Coward argued that the primary purpose of a play was to entertain, and he made no attempt at modernism, which he felt was boring to the audience although fascinating to the critics. His comic novel, Pomp and Circumstance (1960), about life in a tropical British colony, met with more critical success. [99] [n 8]

Even Cole Lesley's 1976 biography refers to Coward as "Noel": "...I have also forgone the use of his beloved diaeresis over the 'e' in his name, having no wish to dizzy the eye of the reader." [151]Ambassadors Theatre", The Daily Telegraph, 9 June 1928, p. 8; and "Criterion Theatre", The Daily Telegraph, 8 September 1925, p. 12 The BBC recorded another television production, which was first shown in the UK during Christmas 1984. This version stars Penelope Keith as Judith, Eddington as David, Patricia Hodge as Myra, Michael Siberry as Simon, Phoebe Nicholls as Sorel and Benjamin Whitrow as Richard. [73] Publication [ edit ] a b Hastings, Chris. "Winston Churchill vetoed Coward knighthood", Telegraph.co.uk, 3 November 2007, accessed 4 January 2009 While Gielgud and Bogarde told me of their great love and respect for Coward, Carey was more reserved. She kept her counsel, as the great witness to her friend’s pleasures and pains. Above all, it is through her eyes – so constant, in these photographs she collected – that I would like to look again at that time and those people. As Amanda, the star of Coward’s most famous play, says: “I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives.” George Abbott / Richard Burton / Circle in the Square Theatre / Thomas H. Fitzgerald / Mathilde Pincus (1976)