In Blithe Spirit, Coward played a middle-aged novelist accused of "nauseating" flippancy. It may have been a savage self-portrait – and his next role, a self-obsessed, egotistical actor in Present Laughter in 1942, was certainly the height of Coward-sending-up-Coward. While the play continued its London run several tours were organised. A company under the management of Ronald Squire began a British tour in February 1942. The cast included Squire (Charles), Browne (Ruth), Ursula Jeans (Elvira), and Agnes Lauchlan (Madame Arcati). A company headed by Coward presented the piece along with Present Laughter and This Happy Breed under the collective title of Play Parade, in a 25-week tour from September 1942. Coward played Charles; Joyce Carey, Ruth; Judy Campbell, Elvira; and Beryl Measor, Madame Arcati. Another tour went out in 1943, headed by John Wentworth as Charles and Mona Washbourne as Madame Arcati. [16] George Abbott / Richard Burton / Circle in the Square Theatre / Thomas H. Fitzgerald / Mathilde Pincus (1976)

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. There were several changes of cast during the run; all but two of the roles were played by different performers at one time or another. Only Martin Lewis and Moya Nugent stayed from the first night to the last. Irene Browne played two different characters during the run. After playing the steely Ruth from 1942 to 1944 she appeared for six months in 1945 as the ebullient Madame Arcati. As well as changes in the regular principals, other actors − including Coward − appeared for short spells of two or more weeks to allow the regulars to take a holiday. [16] Barbey D'Aurevilly, Jules (2002) [1845]. Who's a Dandy? – Dandyism and Beau Brummell. George Walden (trans. and ed. of new edition). London: Gibson Square. ISBN 978-1-903933-18-3.

Coward "wraps this flippant humour around himself like a shield – it's not only disguise but protection," he adds. And when you look at Coward's early years, you see why he might want that armour: they are ripe with grief and guilt.

Encouraged by his ambitious mother, who sent him to a dance academy in London, [7] Coward's first professional engagement was in January 1911 as Prince Mussel in the children's play The Goldfish. [8] In Present Indicative, his first volume of memoirs, Coward wrote: While he honed to perfection the persona of "comic genius Noël Coward", behind the mask was a man who suffered nervous breakdowns, depressions and crying fits; who feared the loss of control that came with falling in love, and had troubled relationships; whose punishing work schedule and relentless appetite for travel suggest someone almost on the run from themselves. The US actress Elaine Stritch, in a letter to mutual friends in 1951, described Coward as "one of the saddest men I’ve ever known". Magill, Frank (ed.). Magill's Literary Annual, 1997. Vol.2. Pasadena: Salem Press. ISBN 978-0-89356-297-7. The record (1,466 performances) had been held by Charley's Aunt since the 1890s. [82] Blithe Spirit's West End record was overtaken by Boeing Boeing in the 1960s. [83]Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 1899–26 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise". [1] Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Present Laughter, and Blithe Spirit, have remained in the regular theatre repertoire. He composed hundreds of songs, in addition to well over a dozen musical theatre works (including the operetta Bitter Sweet and comic revues), screenplays, poetry, several volumes of short stories, the novel Pomp and Circumstance, and a three-volume autobiography. Coward's stage and film acting and directing career spanned six decades, during which he starred in many of his own works, as well as those of others.

James Baskett / Thomas Armat, William Nicholas Selig, Albert E. Smith, and George Kirke Spoor / Bill and Coo / Shoeshine (1947) Noel Coward's Hay Fever, The Argus, 9 February 1931, p. 13; and "Hay Fever at Tivoli", The Argus, p. 10 From the age of 14, he had some sort of relationship with 36-year-old artist, Philip Streatfeild – possibly sexual – before Streatfeild died of trench fever in World War One. Coward's other close friend, John Ekins, also died in the war. In 1918, at the age of 18, Coward had a nervous breakdown in an army training camp before seeing any action, and was hospitalised for six weeks. The play ran for a month (and was Coward's first play seen in America), [27] after which Coward returned to acting in works by other writers, starring as Ralph in The Knight of the Burning Pestle in Birmingham and then London. [32] He did not enjoy the role, finding Francis Beaumont and his sometime collaborator John Fletcher "two of the dullest Elizabethan writers ever known... I had a very, very long part, but I was very, very bad at it". [33] Nevertheless, The Manchester Guardian thought that Coward got the best out of the role, [34] and The Times called the play "the jolliest thing in London". [35] This Happy Breed is one of a very few Coward plays to deal entirely with domestic events outside an upper class or upper middle class setting. A number of scenes are reminiscent of previous Coward works, such as Cavalcade (1931) or the short play Fumed Oak from Tonight at 8.30 (1936).

Cast & Creatives Highlights

Ambassadors Theatre", The Daily Telegraph, 9 June 1928, p. 8; and "Criterion Theatre", The Daily Telegraph, 8 September 1925, p. 12 Coward, Noël (1998). Barry Day (ed.). Coward: The Complete Lyrics. London: Methuen. ISBN 978-0-413-73230-9.

Hay Fever", Daily News, 9 June 1925, p. 4; and "At The Ambassadors", The Tatler, 1 July 1925, p. 20 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] Judith comes down, asks Clara for the Sunday papers and begins reading aloud what the gossip columns say about her. The rest of her family enter. David proposes to read them the final chapter of his novel. Immediately, a minor detail about the geography of Paris is blown into a full-scale family row, with everyone talking at once about whether the Rue Saint-Honoré does or does not connect with the Place de la Concorde and hurling insults at each other. They are so wrapped up in their private row that they do not notice when the four visitors tiptoe down the stairs and out of the house. The Blisses are only momentarily distracted when the slam of the door alerts them to the flight of their guests. Judith comments, "How very rude!" and David adds, "People really do behave in the most extraordinary manner these days." Then, with no further thought of their four tormented guests, they happily return to David's manuscript and to what passes for their normal family life. [27] Revivals [ edit ] West End [ edit ] 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]

What's the story of Patriots?

After Christmas dinner, the grown-ups (Frank and Ethel, Ethel's mother Mrs Flint, and Frank's sister Sylvia) have retired to another room to leave the young people (Frank and Ethel's children: Vi, "a pleasant nondescript-looking girl of twenty"; Queenie, "a year younger... prettier and a trifle flashy"; and Reg, aged eighteen, "a nice-looking intelligent boy", Reg's friend Sam, and Queenie's friend Phyllis) alone. Sam indulges in a spot of socialist preaching against capitalism and injustice. The young women fail to accord him the respect he thinks he deserves, and he and Reg leave. Bob Mitchell's son Billy visits the house. He is left alone with Queenie, and there is a short love scene between them. Queenie baffles him by saying that she so hates suburban life that she would not make him a good wife, and rushes out. Frank enters and encourages Billy. After Billy leaves, Ethel and Frank chat together, partly to avoid Sylvia's singing in the room next door and partly for the pleasure of each other's company. Coward, Noël (2011). Barry Day (ed.). The Complete Verse of Noël Coward. London: Methuen. ISBN 978-1-4081-3174-9. Other examples of "Dad's Renaissance" included a 1968 Off-Broadway production of Private Lives at the Theatre de Lys starring Elaine Stritch, Lee Bowman and Betsy von Furstenberg, and directed by Charles Nelson Reilly. Despite this impressive cast, Coward's popularity had risen so high that the theatre poster for the production used an Al Hirschfeld caricature of Coward ( pictured above) [n 9] instead of an image of the production or its stars. The illustration captures how Coward's image had changed by the 1960s: he was no longer seen as the smooth 1930s sophisticate, but as the doyen of the theatre. As The New Statesman wrote in 1964, "Who would have thought the landmarks of the Sixties would include the emergence of Noël Coward as the grand old man of British drama? There he was one morning, flipping verbal tiddlywinks with reporters about "Dad's Renaissance"; the next he was ... beside Forster, T. S. Eliot and the OMs, demonstrably the greatest living English playwright." [112] Time wrote that "in the 60s... his best work, with its inspired inconsequentiality, seemed to exert not only a period charm but charm, period." [1] Death and honours [ edit ] The Noël Coward Theatre