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Coward Plays #3
Plays 3: Design For Living / Cavalcade / Conversation Piece / Tonight at 8.30 I / Still Life
The third volume of Coward's plays contains some of his best work from the thirties.
" Design for Living" - is about a triangular alliance between two men and a woman, based on friends of Coward's, which he waited to write "until she and he and I had arrived by different roads in our careers at a time and a place when we felt we could all three play together with a more or less equal degree of success." "Cavalcade" was Coward's most ambitious stage project, set during the Boer War, which cost 30,000 in its day and which includes scenes of the relief of the sinking of the Titanic and the coming of the Jazz Age. "Conversation Piece "is a musical comedy that Noel wrote for the Parisian star Yvonne Printemps and includes the song "I'll Follow My Secret Heart."
Also in the volume are three short plays including "Tonight at 8.30 - Hands Across the Sea," a gentle satire of colonials and London Society; "Still Life "which became the film "Brief Encounter" and "Fumed Oak" a suburban comedy about a 'worm who turns'. The volume is introduced by Sheridan Morley.
" Design for Living" - is about a triangular alliance between two men and a woman, based on friends of Coward's, which he waited to write "until she and he and I had arrived by different roads in our careers at a time and a place when we felt we could all three play together with a more or less equal degree of success." "Cavalcade" was Coward's most ambitious stage project, set during the Boer War, which cost 30,000 in its day and which includes scenes of the relief of the sinking of the Titanic and the coming of the Jazz Age. "Conversation Piece "is a musical comedy that Noel wrote for the Parisian star Yvonne Printemps and includes the song "I'll Follow My Secret Heart."
Also in the volume are three short plays including "Tonight at 8.30 - Hands Across the Sea," a gentle satire of colonials and London Society; "Still Life "which became the film "Brief Encounter" and "Fumed Oak" a suburban comedy about a 'worm who turns'. The volume is introduced by Sheridan Morley.
352 pages, Paperback
First published September 6, 1979
7 people are currently reading
35 people want to read
About the author
Noël Coward
429 books218 followersSir Noël Peirce Coward was an English actor, playwright, and composer of popular music. Among his achievements, he received an Academy Certificate of Merit at the 1943 Academy Awards for "outstanding production achievement for In Which We Serve."
Known for his wit, flamboyance, and personal style, his plays and songs achieved new popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, and his work and style continue to influence popular culture. The former Albery Theatre (originally the New Theatre) in London was renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in his honour in 2006.
Known for his wit, flamboyance, and personal style, his plays and songs achieved new popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, and his work and style continue to influence popular culture. The former Albery Theatre (originally the New Theatre) in London was renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in his honour in 2006.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 22, 2024
زیاد دوسش نداشتم، فکر کنم بخاطر اینه که کلا از فیلمهای موزیکال هم بدم میاد. این نمایشنامه هم موزیکال بود برای همین خیلی باهاش ارتباط برقرار نکردم.
May 28, 2024
Another uneven collection, but there's still a few stellar keepers here. On the not so hot side, Cavalcade is likely one of those see-its-don't-read-its. Tracing the lives of a family from 1899 to 1930something, it's a far more musical but far less interesting exploration of ground that Coward also covers in This Happy Breed (not found in this collection). Conversation Piece might offer up more of itself for those who also speak french, but without that ability, this adorable little sex-trafficking romp leaves a little to be desired.
On the positive side, Design For Living does a fun little pivot from love triangle to revenge caper. Private Lives, the basis for the film Brief Encounter, is gorgeous and longing. And finally, Fumed Oak isn't necessarily fun, but it's worth noting for one of Coward's more visceral and frankly violent pieces. Also worth crediting for inspiring me to google some additional information post-read about how oak was originally fumed. Spoiler alert: it's horse pee.
On the positive side, Design For Living does a fun little pivot from love triangle to revenge caper. Private Lives, the basis for the film Brief Encounter, is gorgeous and longing. And finally, Fumed Oak isn't necessarily fun, but it's worth noting for one of Coward's more visceral and frankly violent pieces. Also worth crediting for inspiring me to google some additional information post-read about how oak was originally fumed. Spoiler alert: it's horse pee.
March 2, 2013
Broadly, the idea in Design for Living (first produced in 1933) is similar to that of Private Lives (from three years earlier): people who belong together, or who at any rate deserve each other, try other arrangements before finally ending up together. The difference is that Design for Living involves a triangle plus one—Gilda, Leo, and Otto, plus the longtime friend of all of them, Ernest—so the number of possible wrong combinations for them to try is greater. The triangle wins in the end, and a few of the play's early viewers found that objectionable, even though Noël Coward took care to set it among artists, and notably successful ones at that. Gilda is an interior decorator, Leo is a playwright, Otto is a painter, and even the relatively conventional Ernest is an art dealer; all of them thrive in their careers as the action progresses. A more reasonable objection would've been to ask why the rich and the artistic are allowed to behave differently, but that's a question about the social world of the audience (which Ernest more or less represents), not the world of the play.
I picked up this volume, like the previous one, mainly for tastes of Coward's comedy, so I skipped two of the plays it contains: Cavalcade (1931), a cross between domestic drama and historical epic, which depicts one Mayfair household against the background of 30 years of British history; and Conversation Piece (1934), apparently another operetta in the Viennese style like Bitter-Sweet (1929). Sheridan Morley's introduction gives two intriguing notes about Cavalcade: its premiere production required a cast and crew of 300 people, and the writers of the Upstairs, Downstairs TV series named all that show's chief characters after corresponding personages in Cavalcade. I'm curious to know how it reads, but that'll have to wait.
Three of the nine playlets that made up Tonight at 8:30 (1936) complete the volume. The idea of that series seems pretty remarkable by present-day standards: nine separate one-acts, in various styles, to be presented three at a time, by the same cast, in successive performances. (Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy likewise requires producers and playgoers to ante up for three outings, but even that may have been cheaper than creating sets and costumes for nine different productions.) Contained here are: "Hands Across the Sea," which essentially depicts an impromptu house party that becomes an absolute madhouse; "Still Life," an episodic romantic drama that Coward later expanded into the screenplay for Brief Encounter; and "Fumed Oak," a domestic comedy in which a browbeaten husband reminds us (to borrow Shakespeare's phrasing) that "The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on."
I picked up this volume, like the previous one, mainly for tastes of Coward's comedy, so I skipped two of the plays it contains: Cavalcade (1931), a cross between domestic drama and historical epic, which depicts one Mayfair household against the background of 30 years of British history; and Conversation Piece (1934), apparently another operetta in the Viennese style like Bitter-Sweet (1929). Sheridan Morley's introduction gives two intriguing notes about Cavalcade: its premiere production required a cast and crew of 300 people, and the writers of the Upstairs, Downstairs TV series named all that show's chief characters after corresponding personages in Cavalcade. I'm curious to know how it reads, but that'll have to wait.
Three of the nine playlets that made up Tonight at 8:30 (1936) complete the volume. The idea of that series seems pretty remarkable by present-day standards: nine separate one-acts, in various styles, to be presented three at a time, by the same cast, in successive performances. (Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy likewise requires producers and playgoers to ante up for three outings, but even that may have been cheaper than creating sets and costumes for nine different productions.) Contained here are: "Hands Across the Sea," which essentially depicts an impromptu house party that becomes an absolute madhouse; "Still Life," an episodic romantic drama that Coward later expanded into the screenplay for Brief Encounter; and "Fumed Oak," a domestic comedy in which a browbeaten husband reminds us (to borrow Shakespeare's phrasing) that "The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews