Noel Coward wrote the classic Hay Fever in 1925 and it is still running today in the West End with Felicity Kendal starring as Judith Bliss. He also penned Design for Living eight years later in 1933 which was equally successful as a film starring Gary Cooper.
Noel composed The Young Idea, a youth comedy, very early in his career in 1922 with moderate success although it played at the prestigious Savoy Theatre in London a year later. But, The Last Chapter, a co-written piece, nearly 100 years old, was his earliest venture as far back as 1917.
His Weatherwise was written in 1923 but not performed until 9 years later in 1932. My favourite Coward play is Private Lives from 1930, it’s a comedy set in 3 acts. In the middle years Blithe Spirit was the runaway success, a play about a séance that ran on Broadway and The West End from 1941.
Mad Dogs and Englishmen is one of Noel’s enduring songs and he performed this, his signature piece, many times on stage after the debut performance at the Music Box Theatre, NY, in 1931. Bitter Sweet is more of an operetta than a play but it is one of his most successful pieces from his early days in 1928.
He ridiculed the art world with Nude with Violin (1956) and poked fun at the art critics, pretentious artists and art-speak in general. His Look after Lulu, a French farce set in Paris, in 1908 was not met with much success, although Roddy MacDowall was the Broadway star signing and Vivienne Leigh played a role in the West End version in 1959.
The last Coward work Star Quality was written in 1967 but not performed on stage until many years later in 1985. The romcom Quadrille was one of the better shows after the war but it did not compare well to his pre war comedies. Sir Noel Cowards’s reputation was finally established by The Vortex, a 1924 play that ran to great acclaim in London, featuring nymphomania, drug abuse and sexual vanity among the upper classes.
And to end, the appropriately named Post Mortem, a prisoner of war camp production was performed in Austria by amateurs in 1944, but the professional stage rendition only took place nearly 20 years after Coward’s death.
**Congratulations to 'GerLor' for FTF**