Noel Coward Collected Plays: THREE: 3

Product Information

The Broadway premiere was on 5 November 1941 at the Morosco Theatre, presented by Coward's American producer, John C. Wilson, with designs by Stewart Chaney. The play transferred to the Booth Theatre on 18 May 1942; it ran for a total of 657 performances. [27] After closing at the Booth on 5 June 1943, a return engagement played 32 performances from 6 September to 2 October 1943 at the Morosco. Haila Stoddard took over as Elvira. [28] While the first Broadway production was still running, Wilson mounted another in Chicago. It opened on 17 February 1942 at the Selwyn Theater. [29]

An American critic, Burns Mantle, wrote, "why it is called Hay Fever I have not the slightest notion, unless it is because it may give you a headache". [59] He predicted that the play would have little appeal to audiences "beyond the Vanity Fair crowd that has taken up the fascinating Mr Coward with such enthusiasm". [60] In 1920, at the age of 20, Coward starred in his own play, the light comedy I'll Leave It to You. After a three-week run in Manchester it opened in London at the New Theatre (renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in 2006), his first full-length play in the West End. [27] Neville Cardus's praise in The Manchester Guardian was grudging. [28] Notices for the London production were mixed, but encouraging. [29] The Observer commented, "Mr Coward... has a sense of comedy, and if he can overcome a tendency to smartness, he will probably produce a good play one of these days." [30] The Times, on the other hand, was enthusiastic: "It is a remarkable piece of work from so young a head – spontaneous, light, and always 'brainy'." [31] Coward in The Knight of the Burning Pestle in 1920 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.Mander, Raymond; Joe Mitchenson (2000) [1957]. Theatrical Companion to Coward. Barry Day and Sheridan Morley (2000 edition, ed.) (seconded.). London: Oberon Books. ISBN 978-1-84002-054-0. 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] a b Hastings, Chris. "Winston Churchill vetoed Coward knighthood", Telegraph.co.uk, 3 November 2007, accessed 4 January 2009 Walt Disney, William Garity, John N. A. Hawkins, and the RCA Manufacturing Company / Leopold Stokowski and his associates / Rey Scott / British Ministry of Information (1941) Why", asked Coward, "am I always expected to wear a dressing-gown, smoke cigarettes in a long holder and say 'Darling, how wonderful'?" [152] The answer lay in Coward's assiduous cultivation of a carefully crafted image. As a suburban boy who had been taken up by the upper classes he rapidly acquired the taste for high life: "I am determined to travel through life first class." [153] He first wore a dressing gown onstage in The Vortex and used the fashion in several of his other famous plays, including Private Lives and Present Laughter. [154] [155] George Walden identifies him as a modern dandy. [156] In connection with the National Theatre's 2008 exhibition, The Independent commented, "His famous silk, polka-dot dressing gown and elegant cigarette holder both seem to belong to another era. But 2008 is proving to be the year that Britain falls in love with Noël Coward all over again." [126]

Twentieth-century blues: the songs of Noel Coward", "Ian Bostridge: Noël Coward songbook"; and "Sutherland sings Noel Coward", WorldCat, accessed 5 December 2013 Leonard Bernstein / Carol Burnett / Rex Harrison / The National Theatre Company of Great Britain / The Negro Ensemble Company (1969) Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward, The National Theatre, June 1976 (and tour)" at haroldpinter.org, 2003, accessed 7 March 2009It is this that makes a newly discovered photograph album so extraordinary. It shows intimate glimpses from the private life of this towering cultural figure. Apparently compiled in the 1930s by Coward’s closest female friend, Joyce Carey, the album is a remarkable insight into gay lives of the interwar years, lived in plain sight. Carey died in 1993. It is because of her long-held loyalty to the man she and other intimates only half-ironically called the Master that the album has only now come to light, due to be sold at a London sale room later this month. Hoare, Philip. "Coward, Sir Noël Peirce (1899–1973)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, January 2008. (subscription or UK public library membership required) 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]

One day ... a little advertisement appeared in the Daily Mirror.... It stated that a talented boy of attractive appearance was required by a Miss Lila Field to appear in her production of an all-children fairy play: The Goldfish. This seemed to dispose of all argument. I was a talented boy, God knows, and, when washed and smarmed down a bit, passably attractive. There appeared to be no earthly reason why Miss Lila Field shouldn't jump at me, and we both believed that she would be a fool indeed to miss such a magnificent opportunity. [9] Coward (left) with Lydia Bilbrook and Charles Hawtrey, 1911 Left alone with Richard, Judith flirts with him, and when he chastely kisses her she theatrically over-reacts as though they were conducting a serious affair. She nonplusses Richard by talking of breaking the news to David. She in turn is nonplussed to discover Sandy and Sorel kissing in the library. That too has been mere flirtation, but both Judith and Sorel enjoy themselves by exaggerating it. Judith gives a performance nobly renouncing her claim on Sandy, and exits. Sorel explains to Sandy that she was just playing the theatrical game for Judith's benefit, as "one always plays up to Mother in this house; it's a sort of unwritten law." They leave. [24] Bausch & Lomb Optical Company / Danny Kaye / Kemp Niver / Greta Garbo / Jon Whiteley / Vincent Winter / Gate of Hell (1954) A revival, directed by Blakemore with most of the West End cast (including Lansbury at age 89) except Charlotte Parry as Ruth, toured North America from December 2014 to March 2015, visiting Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto and Washington D.C. [36] [37] American casts, 1941 to 2011 [ edit ] Roles Mad dogs and Englishmen ... Coward, on right, in the Bahamas with Alan Webb, with whom he had a tempestuous relationship.Coward maintained close friendships with many women, including the actress and author Esmé Wynne-Tyson, his first collaborator and constant correspondent; Gladys Calthrop, who designed sets and costumes for many of his works; his secretary and close confidante Lorn Loraine; the actresses Gertrude Lawrence, Joyce Carey and Judy Campbell; and "his loyal and lifelong amitié amoureuse", Marlene Dietrich. [137] 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) Coward's out-sized, charming persona was his passport to freely moving through worlds he was not from. It has not, however, necessarily helped our understanding of the work: it's taken "half a century to get him out the way!" Soden laughs. Coward had a vein of determined anti-intellectualism, and often undermined his own work: "He would swear blind that he wasn't remotely serious, just a silly trite little comedian. But the plays tell a completely different story, whether or not he meant them to," insists Soden.