Coward Plays 7

The Seventh volume in the Coward Collection. On Quadrille: "Miss Fontanne plays the madcap Marchioness with the crackle and sheen of a five-pound note. Her eyes mock marvelously, her voice cuts like a knife into a wedding cake, and the scene in Act Three, on the eve of her elopement with Mr. Lung, is as delicious as crushed ice." Evening Standard, 1952. "The idea of Peace in Our Time", Coward wrote "was conceived in Paris shortly after the Liberation. . . I began to suspect that the physical effect of four years intermittent bombing is far less damaging to the intrinsic character of a nation than the spiritual effect of four years enemy occupation." The volume also contains four pieces from the Tonight at 8.30 sequence: We Were Dancing "provides a marvelously compact illustration of the way the English public school spirit prevails even in moments of strenuous passion." "Shadow Play is a musical fantasy. . . which gave Gertie and me a chance to sing as romantically as we could, dance in the moonlight and, we hoped, convince the audience that we were very fascinating indeed"; and "Family Album - a sly satire on Victorian hypocrisy, adorned with an unobtrusive but agreeable musical score. It was stylised both in its decor and its performance, was a joy to play and provided the whole talented company with good parts." Star Chamber, closely based on Coward's experiences trying to co-ordinate his Actors' Orphanage charity committee, is published here for the first time.

'Peace in Our Time' is a two-act play written in 1946 by Noël Coward. The play focuses on a small group of Londoners in a pub close to Sloane Square, in an alternate history where Nazi Germany won the Battle of Britain and successfully invaded and occupied the United Kingdom.

Although Noël Coward's work as playwright, songwriter and actor has long been celebrated, his contributions to the British musical have largely been forgotten. Selected Musical Plays by Noël Coward: A Critical Anthology rectifies this omission from the musical theatre landscape, demonstrating how Coward's adaptability, creativity, and myriad of styles is imitated in the incredible musicals he authored. From flop shows at Drury Lane with Mary Martin through to his Broadway hits with Elaine Stritch, this anthology chronicles the variety of styles written by Coward, from revue to musical comedy to operetta. The works in this volume provide a contemporary critical introduction that illustrates the breadth and depth of his work, and highlighting the diverse identities of the collaborators and performers with whom he worked. Though the style of these works varies, they are linked together by his creative thread, and his ability to craft barbed and witty observations of his social world. A timely portrait of Coward's oeuvre and its lasting influence on the wider world of the British musical, Selected Musical Plays by Noël Coward contains previously unpublished musical plays by a central figure in theatre history, collected together with critical apparatus for students, scholars, and fans.

Between the trials of Oscar Wilde in the 1890s and the beginnings of legal reforms in the 1960s, the West End stage was dominated by the work of gay playwrights. Many of their plays, such as Private Lives, Blithe Spirit and The Deep Blue Sea are established classics and continue to inform our culture. In this fascinating book, covering both familiar and lesser-known works, Sean O'Connor examines the legacy of Wilde as a playwright and as a gay man, and explores in the works of Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan the resonance of Wilde's agenda for tolerance and his creed of individuality. O'Connor contextualises these plays against the enormous social and historical changes of the twentieth century. He also examines the legal restrictions which regulated the personal lives of these writers and required them to evolve sophisticated strategies in order to express on stage, albeit obliquely, their dilemmas as gay men. From the delicate homoerotic frissons of Rattigan's early comedies to Coward's defiantly pro-sex stance, Straight Acting is a provocative and witty insight into the subtly subversive tactics of gay writers working in that apparently most conservative of forms, the 'well-made play'.

Publisher Description

The First World War (1914–1918) marked a turning point in modern history and culture and its literary legacy is vast: poetry, fiction and memoirs abound. But the drama of the period is rarely recognised, with only a handful of plays commonly associated with the war. First World War Plays draws together canonical and lesser-known plays from the First World War to the end of the twentieth century, tracing the ways in which dramatists have engaged with and resisted World War I in their works. Spanning almost a century of conflict, this anthology explores the changing cultural attitudes to warfare, including the significance of the war over time, interwar pacifism, and historical revisionism. The collection includes writing by combatants, as well as playwrights addressing historical events and national memory, by both men and women, and by writers from Great Britain and the United States. Plays from the period, like Night Watches by Allan Monkhouse (1916), Mine Eyes Have Seen by Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1918) and Tunnel Trench by Hubert Griffith (1924), are joined with reflections on the war in Post Mortem by Noël Coward (1930, performed 1944) and Oh What A Lovely War by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop (1963) as well as later works The Accrington Pals by Peter Whelan (1982) and Sea and Land and Sky by Abigail Docherty (2010). Accompanied by a general introduction by editor, Dr Mark Rawlinson.

"Its fusion of passion and mischief remains striking and there is something undeniably heady about its celebration of a kind of sexual liberation that looks a lot like flippancy" - Evening Standard From 1930s bohemian Paris to the dizzying heights of Manhattan society, a tempestuous love triangle unravels between a vivacious interior designer, Gilda, playwright Leo and artist Otto - three people unashamedly and passionately in love with each other. But can such a lavish love affair survive the real world? Exploring themes of bisexuality, celebrity, success and self-obsession, Design for Living is a stylish and scandalous comedy, that is often revered as Coward's most controversial and risqué work. This new edition is published in Methuen Drama's iconic Modern Classics series to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Coward's death and features a new introduction by Oliver Soden.