Noël Coward was to dominate British theatre for a generation
as a playwright, composer, lyricist, actor and manager. Born
in 1899 in Teddington on the outskirts of London, Coward first
appeared on stage as Prince Mussel in the children’s
play
The Goldfish in 1911. He wrote and performed in
Charlot’s revue before becoming an icon of the 1920s -
sophisticated, brilliant and idolised by high society. His
revue
This Year of Grace captured the self-indulgent pursuit
of hedonism by the upper classes in the 1920s.
Coward wrote classics of high comedy that enshrine the period
in which they were written: Hay Fever captures the
spirit of the 1920s, the sophisticated Private Lives
the 1930s and This Happy Breed the 1940s. Coward’s
most spectacular show was Cavalcade which opened in
1930 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Cavalcade was
a pageant of English history seen through different generations
of the same family.
In the 1950s his career faltered as he slipped out of fashion.
Undaunted, he reinvented himself as a cabaret performer, performing
his own material in America and England. Coward’s neglect
was short-lived. In 1964 Hay Fever was performed at
the National Theatre and in 1967 he was included in a BBC television
series on Great Acting. Suddenly the enfant terrible had become
the Grand Old Man of British theatre. He died in 1973.
It is not surprising that Coward was the perfect interpreter
of his own work. He admitted that he wrote many of his plays
to give himself good fat parts. He also wrote good roles for
Gertrude Lawrence in Private Lives and Tonight
at 8.30 and made a star of Margaret Rutherford as the ‘jolly
hockey-sticks’ medium Madam Arcarti in Blithe Spirit.
Introduction
