The Genius of Noel Coward

FRIVOLOUS AND THE GENIUS OF NOEL COWARD 6 SHAW MAGAZINE / SUMMER 2009 BY JILL PLANCHE TONIGHT AT 8:30 IS A VIVID ILLUSTRATION OF NOEL COWARD’S INFINITE VARIETY OF GENRE. THE THREE PLAYS THAT MAKE UP PLAY, ORCHESTRA, PLAY REFLECT THIS VERSATILITY, TAKING US FROM THE HILARITY OF WHAT COWARD CALLS “A VAUDEVILLE SKETCH SANDWICHED IN BETWEEN TWO PARODIES OF MUSIC HALL SONGS,” ‘HAS ANYBODY SEEN OUR SHIP’ AND ‘MEN ABOUT TOWN’, TO “A NOSTALGIC ROMANCE PLAYED OUT IN A DREAMLIKE MUSICAL FANTASY.” IN THE MIDDLE LIES THE PLAY COWARD CALLS “AN UNPLEASANT COMEDY” BASED ON THE “WORM WILL TURN” THEME, THE WORM IN THIS CASE BEING HENRY GOW, COWARD’S FAVOURITE CHARACTER. “I LOVED HENRY GOW FROM THE MOMENT I STARTED WRITING HIM,” HE CLAIMED, “AND PROFOUND I LOVED PLAYING HIM MORE, I THINK THAN ANYTHING ELSE IN THE REPERTOIRE.” Patty Jamieson and Jay Turvey in PLAY, ORCHESTRA, PLAY (RED PEPPERS) 7 Fiona Reid, David Schurmann, Wendy Thatcher and Andrew Gillies in CAVALCADE (1995); David Schurmann and Goldie Semple in EASY VIRTUE (1999); The original production of FUMED OAK with Gertrude Lawrence, CHRISTOPHER NEWTON is the director of PLAY, Lynn Lund wrote: “Their utter third-ratedness is so ORCHESTRA, PLAY. During his twenty-three years as The awfully pathetic you know exactly why (aside from Shaw’s Artistic Director he presented fourteen Coward the pitiful business of their act) they have never been productions, directing many of them, and over the and never could be successful” (Letters, 333). course of his career he has acted in several, including “With Henry Gow in FUMED OAK, on the other playing Elyot in PRIVATE LIVES. We spoke with him hand,” says Newton, “you see a man who has set before a rehearsal of his newest Coward project. his sights on the dream of escape.” He has long given Coward commentator John Lahr observes: “Only up on any hope of a future with his nagging wife, at his most frivolous is Coward in any sense snivelling daughter, and manipulative mother-in-law. profound.” The surface brilliance and glitter hides The first scene shows the awfulness of this existence, the touching sombre tone that lies beneath. It is a and Henry’s silent presence hides the dream that view that seems contrary to the popular perception is soon to be realised when he deserts them with a of Coward, which is often reduced to the dressing flourish. When I asked Newton why Coward would have called Henry Gow his favourite character to THE SURFACE BRILLIANCE write and play, he said he could fully understand AND GLITTER HIDES Coward’s sentiment. “Gow is a beautifully constructed THE TOUCHING SOMBRE character,” he says. “In the first scene he doesn’t do TONE THAT LIES BENEATH. or say anything – he is an observer in the midst of the bickering women. In the second half he is the centre gown, cigarette and martini. I asked Newton what of the action. He exposes the result of what we have we should be looking for in these plays to find that just seen. He doesn’t directly comment on it, but “profound” lying below the “frivolous” that Lahr Coward has set him up to give this fantastic speech refers to. “At the heart of Coward’s work is the about his ruined life, his imminent escape, and his universal; the element that joins us all together,” he dream of a new world.” replies. While several ideas connect the three pieces In SHADOW PLAY we go inside the dream, into what that make up PLAY, ORCHESTRA, PLAY, he sees the might be, what was, what must be rediscovered. “It is primary one as that of lost dreams. In RED PEPPERS this theme of dreams gone wrong, of things that can’t the decline of vaudeville hangs over the play, giving be completed, that joins the three plays together,” a poignant undertone to the raucous hilarity. George says Newton. “There is a sadness that runs through and Lily Pepper, a third-rate song-and-dance team, them. In these worlds that we can laugh at, someone are facing the end of their careers, their dreams, and is hurt; there is always something missing.” desperately hide their sense of defeat behind abuse In approaching the design for the plays, Newton of the theatre management and orchestra leader, and and designer Cameron Porteous started with bickering between themselves. In a letter to Coward SHADOW PLAY, which is “the most dense, the most after reading the play, his long-time friend actress difficult of the three.” With this piece Coward uses 8 SHAW MAGAZINE / SUMMER 2009 Alison Leggatt, Noël Coward and Moya Nugent; Severn Thompson in HAY FEVER (2002); Julie Martell and Steven Sutcliffe with the Cast of PLAY, ORCHESTRA, PLAY (SHADOW PLAY). devices that were then considered avant garde. showing social conditions, upstairs, downstairs, “It takes us into a dreamlike state with shifts in time huge events. Stories all told in tight little scenes tied into past, present and future; where one character together with a narrative that creates a satisfying telling the other what lines to say becomes part completeness. Coward was a master at creating a big of the scene. He seems to grab bits of Pirandello and event out of a series of small ones. But underlying of the French avant garde that he probably saw the surface is the most dense underpinning you can in Paris,” says Newton. “Coward was a populist find. Something is going on that everything sits on.” who liked to be popular, and he considered this to be Rebecca West said Coward had a “better grasp of an approachable experimental piece. The genius of what was going wrong in our society than Shaw” Coward, however,” he adds, “is that he lavishes on (Nova Magazine, June 1973). Newton agrees. “It was a strange one-act piece three of his loveliest songs.” the plays Shaw wrote during and before the First To deal with these complexities, Newton and World War that have most life in them. Afterwards Porteous felt they had to have strong visual elements he seemed to lose the direct contact with his world. that Coward didn’t have, and settled on the idea of Coward, on the other hand, knew his period, the using video projections based on the lanterna magica people and their problems. Despite his lower middle device of Josef Svoboda where you see an actor in class background, Coward seems connected with all a video and the actor then appears on stage. They of society – his uncle was an admiral – and always extended this design concept to the other two plays in seemed in the middle of things. He was always in the trio to provide a visual strength that would bring touch with the world, partly because he was an actor clarity and push out the edges. For instance, the easiest as well as a writer. As a performer he knew that he had way to deal with the 1930s music-hall experience – to be in the moment in order to touch his audience.” unfamiliar to contemporary audiences – is to visually Newton considers Noël Coward to be one of the show that world and give the audience its context. greatest modernist playwrights. He “must be treated And, for Newton context is very important. like Chekhov, Ibsen, Miller,” he contends. After all, I asked him how he approached directing the “Coward wrote one of the greatest comedies ever three tight little plays of PLAY, ORCHESTRA, PLAY written – PRIVATE LIVES.” compared, say, to his approach to CAVALCADE (which he directed at The Shaw in 1985, 1986, and 1995), Coward’s sweeping epic look at the close of the British Empire. After all, James Thurber says of the FURTHER READING: one-act plays: “They have at their best, a precision THE LETTERS OF NOEL COWARD, edited by Barry Day, now available that moves towards the absolute.” Newton doesn’t in paperback from Bernard’s, The Shaw Shop. $22.95 Order online www.shawfest.com/Home/Shaw-Festival-Shop see a difference. He hones in on the notion of the Joel Kaplan’s essay for the 2001 Shadow Play house programme scene, the story. CAVALCADE for all the breadth of its can be found on the Noël Coward site at narrative was, he said, “really a series of scenes www.tonightat830.com/assets/pdf/Thatnightat8-30.pdf 9.

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