Noel Coward Collected Plays: THREE: 3

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The action is set in the Hall of David Bliss's house at Cookham, Berkshire, by the River Thames. [19] Act I [ edit ] A Saturday afternoon in June Judith Bliss ( Marie Tempest) strikes a pose, 1925 By the end of the 1960s, Coward developed arteriosclerosis and, during the run of Suite in Three Keys, he struggled with bouts of memory loss. [113] This also affected his work in The Italian Job, and he retired from acting immediately afterwards. [114] Coward was knighted in 1970, [115] and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. [116] He received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 1970. [117] In 1972, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Sussex. [118] In 1933 Coward wrote, directed and co-starred with the French singer Yvonne Printemps in both London and New York productions of an operetta, Conversation Piece (1933). [64] He next wrote, directed and co-starred with Lawrence in Tonight at 8.30 (1936), a cycle of ten short plays, presented in various permutations across three evenings. [n 5] One of these plays, Still Life, was expanded into the 1945 David Lean film Brief Encounter. [66] Tonight at 8.30 was followed by a musical, Operette (1938), from which the most famous number is "The Stately Homes of England", and a revue entitled Set to Music (1938, a Broadway version of his 1932 London revue, Words and Music). [67] Coward's last pre-war plays were This Happy Breed, a drama about a working-class family, and Present Laughter, a comic self-caricature with an egomaniac actor as the central character. These were first performed in 1942, although they were both written in 1939. [68] A 1944 film adaptation, also called This Happy Breed, was directed by David Lean and starred Robert Newton and Celia Johnson. Actors' Equity Association / A Moon for the Misbegotten / Candide / Peter Cook and Dudley Moore / Harold Friedlander / Bette Midler / Liza Minnelli / Theatre Development Fund / John F. Wharton (1974)

The family have been listening to ex-king Edward VIII's abdication broadcast. In the intervening time, Mrs Flint has died, and Vi and Sam, now married, have become comfortably middle-aged. Billy enters with the news that he has run into Queenie in Menton. Her lover had left her and returned to his wife, leaving Queenie stranded. After some prevarication Billy says that Queenie is with him and indeed is now his wife. Queenie enters, and there is an awkward but loving reconciliation between her and Ethel. His masterpiece Blithe Spirit – which he considered “technically my best piece of writing” – was completed in eight days, in the aftermath of the London bombing. It remains one of the funniest British dramas of its era, hailed by George Orwell as “a devastating satire on spiritualism”. Lean’s 1945 film starred Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati, a role taken by Judi Dench in the 2020 remake. Coward’s hilarious mystic has also been portrayed on stage by Beryl Reid, Alison Steadman, Angela Lansbury and Jennifer Saunders.When World War Two began, the deeply patriotic Coward attempted to atone for missing the first one – bothering everyone, up to and including Churchill, for a job. He ended up with several: spying for an underground new secret service, running a propaganda department in France, attempting to stealthily influence important Americans to support Britain and enter the war, even holding meetings in President Roosevelt's bedroom. 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] Anderson, Donald (Spring 2011). "A Hasty Kind of Genius: Noël Coward's Hay Fever". Modern Drama. 54 (1): 45–61. doi: 10.1353/mdr.2011.0002. (subscription required) Coward, Noël (1986). Past Conditional (third volume, unfinished, of autobiography) . London: Heinemann. ISBN 978-0-413-60660-0.

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) It is the time of Neville Chamberlain's return from Munich and the false hopes of averting war. Sylvia is as delighted by the Munich agreement as Frank is bitterly opposed to it. Bob comes in to say goodbye. He is moving to the country. He and Frank reminisce and look forward to the future anxiously. Tynan's was the first generation of critics to realise that Coward's plays might enjoy more than ephemeral success. In the 1930s, Cyril Connolly wrote that they were "written in the most topical and perishable way imaginable, the cream in them turns sour overnight". [189] What seemed daring in the 1920s and 1930s came to seem old-fashioned in the 1950s, and Coward never repeated the success of his pre-war plays. [45] By the 1960s, critics began to note that underneath the witty dialogue and the Art Deco glamour of the inter-war years, Coward's best plays also dealt with recognisable people and familiar relationships, with an emotional depth and pathos that had been often overlooked. [190] By the time of his death, The Times was writing of him, "None of the great figures of the English theatre has been more versatile than he", and the paper ranked his plays in "the classical tradition of Congreve, Sheridan, Wilde and Shaw". [50] In late 1999 The Stage ran what it called a "millennium poll" of its readers to name the people from the world of theatre, variety, broadcasting or film who have most influenced the arts and entertainment in Britain: Shakespeare came first, followed by Coward in second place. [191] Sorel and Simon Bliss, a brother and sister, exchange artistic and bohemian dialogue. Judith, their mother, displays the absent-minded theatricality of a retired star actress, and David, their father, a novelist, is concentrating on finishing his latest book. Each of the four members of the Bliss family, without consulting the others, has invited a guest for the weekend. Judith announces that she has decided to return to the stage in one of her old hits, Love's Whirlwind. She and Sorel and Simon amuse themselves acting out a melodramatic passage from the play beginning, "Is this a game?" "Yes, and a game that must be played to the finish!" [20] They are interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. [21]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". Coward retained a liking for the earlier title and used it for one of the plays – a serious one – in his cycle Tonight at 8.30 in 1936. [11]

When the piece had its first West End revival in 1970 the play was warmly though not rapturously praised by the critics, [49] [50] but by the time of the next major production, in 1976, Irving Wardle of The Times considered, "Stylistically, it is Coward's masterpiece: his most complete success in imposing his own view of things on the brute facts of existence," [51] and Michael Billington of The Guardian wrote of Coward's influence on Harold Pinter. [18] Coward's partner, Graham Payn, commented to Peter Hall that Coward would have loved the production (directed by Pinter) "because at last the play was centred on the marriage between Charles and Ruth; Elvira and ... Madame Arcati were incidentals". [52] [n 7] After the Broadway revival in 1987 Newsweek commented that the play reminds us that Coward was the precursor of playwrights like Pinter and Joe Orton. [54] 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] 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.A production at the Comedy Theatre, Melbourne in April 1945 starred Edwin Styles as Charles, Aileen Britton as Ruth, Bettina Welch as Elvira and Letty Craydon as Madame Arcati. [38] In 2003 Roger Hodgman directed a production by the Melbourne Theatre Company, with Miriam Margolyes as Arcati. [39] It later played the Sydney Opera House. [40] France [ edit ] Coward, Noël (1994). Plays, Five. Sheridan Morley (introduction). London: Methuen. ISBN 978-0-413-51740-1. The Noël Coward Theatre in St Martin's Lane, originally opened in 1903 as the New Theatre and later called the Albery, was renamed in his honour after extensive refurbishment, re-opening on 1 June 2006. [122] A statue of Coward by Angela Conner was unveiled by the Queen Mother in the foyer of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1998. [123] There are also sculptures of Coward displayed in New York and Jamaica, [124] and a bust of him in the library in Teddington, near where he was born. [125] In 2008 an exhibition devoted to Coward was mounted at the National Theatre in London. [126] The exhibition was later hosted by the Museum of Performance & Design in San Francisco and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California. [127] In June 2021 an exhibition celebrating Coward opened at the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London. [128] Personal life [ edit ] Coward as Slightly in Peter Pan in 1913 Coward, Noël (1998). Barry Day (ed.). Coward: The Complete Lyrics. London: Methuen. ISBN 978-0-413-73230-9. New Tours", The Stage, 10 September 1925; and "Eva Moore In Hay Fever By Noel Coward", The Stage, 17 September 1925, p. 21