Download or read book Nude with Violin written by Noel Coward and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 1958 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nude with Violin written by Noel Coward and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Nude with Violin', a light comedy of manners, is Coward's three act satire on 'modern art', criticism, artistic pretention and the value placed on art, set in Paris in 1954. The famous painter, Paul Sorodin, has died. His relatives and hangers-on converge on his studio, hopeful of financial gain, and are stunned to learn from his valet, Sebastien, that Sorodin has left a letter in which he admits that he never painted a picture in his life. The paintings of Sorodin's supposed three major periods turn out to have been executed by a choleric aristocrat, a jolly barmaid, and a Jamaican Seventh-day Adventist.
Download or read book Nude with Violin written by Noël Coward and published by . This book was released on 1958 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nude with Violin written by Noel Coward and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nude with Violin written by and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Coward The Playwright written by John Lahr and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-01-08 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reissue in hardback of critic John Lahr's famous 1982 study of Noël Coward's plays"Noël Coward," said Terence Rattigan, "is simply a phenomenon, and one that is unlikely to occur ever again in theatre history." A phenomenon he certainly was, and it is part of John Lahr's purpose in this book to show how that phenomenon called "Noël Coward" was largely Coward's own careful creation. Lahr's penetrating critical study of Coward's drama investigates all the major and minor plays of "The Master". Private Lives, Design for Living and Hay Fever make a fascinating group of "Comedies of Bad Manners". Blithe Spirit and Relative Values raise the "Ghost in the Fun Machine". Lahr then goes on to explore the "politics of charm" oozing through The Vortex, Easy Virtue and Present Laughter. In all Coward's plays Lahr uncovers a coherent philosophy in which charm is both the subject of Coward's comedies and the trap which made his very public life a perpetual performance.
Download or read book Coward Plays 4 written by Noël Coward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume Four of Noël Coward's plays contains a selection of Coward's plays from the thirties and forties which includes Blithe Spirit, a comedy that centres around the spirit medium Madame Arcati. The play that mocks sudden death was produced at precisely the moment when bombs were bringing it to Britain "I shall ever be grateful, for the almost psychic gift that enabled me to write Blithe Spirit in five days during one of the darkest years of the war." The play was for years the longest-running comedy in the history of British theatre. Present Laughter follows the life of Garry Essendine, a world-weary, middle-aged projection of the dilettante, debonair persona - self-obsessed and dressing-gowned who struts through the play like an educated peacock. It is a comedy about the 'theatricals' that Noël best knew and loved, and was originally a star vehicle for himself. It is the closest to an autobiographical play that Coward ever wrote. This Happy Breed is a saga of a lower middle-class family; and three shorter pieces fromTonight at 8.30 - is a farce set in the South of France, and serves as an oblique tribute to Frederick Lonsdale; The Astonished Heart is about the decay of a psychiatrist's mind through personal sexual obsession. Red Peppers, which closes the volume, was a cynical tribute to the lost music halls of the First World War.
Download or read book The No l Coward Reader written by Noël Coward and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-09-06 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Noël Coward Reader offers a wonderfully wide-ranging selection—the first of its kind—of the best of the Master’s oeuvre, entertainingly annotated and abundantly illustrated, and including material that has never before been published. Here are scenes from Coward’s famous plays, from Private Lives to Blithe Spirit, and his screenplays, from Brief Encounter to In Which We Serve. Here are four of his best short stories, scenes from his only novel, and a generous selection of his verse, alongside the lyrics of many of his most sublime songs, including “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” “The Stately Homes of England,” and “Mad About the Boy.” The Noël Coward Reader is a must-have book both for those who adore his work and for those who are just discovering the many-faceted delights of his comic genius.
Download or read book Coward Plays 5 written by Noël Coward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Containing Coward's best work from the last two decades of his life, this volume includes Relative Values, which ran for over a year in 1951-2, Look After Lulu (1959), his perennially popular Feydeau adaptation, Waiting in the Wings (1960), a bravura piece set in a home for retired actresses, and Suite in Three Keys (1965), a trilogy of plays which gave Coward his last roles on stage. The volume is introduced by Sheridan Morley, Coward's first biographer, and includes an extensive chronology of Coward's work.
Download or read book Hay Fever written by Noël Coward and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-25 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First produced in 1925, Hay Fever is technically a masterpiece. A comedy of bad manners which starts with the arrival of four guests, invited independently by different members of the Bliss family for a weekend at their country house near Maidenhead. The promise of an idyllic and peaceful weekend is quickly trounced by the self-absorbed eccentricities of the family who leave the guests to slink away humiliated, embarrassed and abandoned. "It does not date... it is in the highest mood of fantastic comedy, it is deliciously heartless and therefore delicioiusly alive and fresh" The Times
Download or read book Blithe Spirit written by Noël Coward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I will ever be grateful for the almost psychic gift that enabled me to write Blithe Spirit in five days during one of the darkest years of the war.' Written in 1941, Blithe Spirit remained the longest-running comedy in British Theatre for three decades thereafter. Plotted around the central role of one of Coward's best loved characters, a spirit medium Madame Arcati (originally performed by Margaret Rutherford) Coward's play is an escapist comedy about a man whose two previous wives return to haunt him. "A minor comic masterpiece of the lighter sort" Professor Allardyce Nicoll
Download or read book Coward Plays 8 written by Noël Coward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eighth volume in the Coward Collection includes I'll Leave It To You and The Young Idea, the first of Coward's plays ever to be produced. These were, as he said, "enthusiastically acclaimed by the critics and ran five weeks and eight weeks respectively. In both of them I appeared with the utmost determination." This Was a Man, a slightly later play, was written in 1926, after the successes which made his name. It was originally banned by the Lord Chamberlain "for facetious adultery".
Download or read book Noel Coward written by Philip Hoare and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-05-21 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive biography of one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated and controversial dramatists. To several generations, actor, playwright, songwriter, and filmmaker Noël Coward (1899-1973) was the very personification of wit, glamour, and elegance. Given unprecedented access to the private papers and correspondence of Coward family members, compatriots, and numerous lovers, Samuel Johnson Prize-winning biographer Philip Hoare has produced an illuminating and sophisticated biography of Coward, whose relentless drive for success and approval fueled the stunning bursts of creativity that launched the once-painfully middle class boy from the suburbs of London into a pantheon of theatrical deities that includes Gilbert and Sullivan, Oscar Wilde, and George Bernard Shaw. As much the embodiment of a lifestyle as an actual inhabitant of it, Coward’s carefully cultivated image defined the aspirations of untold numbers of actors, artists, and writers who succeeded him, and Hoare’s meticulously researched biography peels away the layers of this complex persona to reveal the man underneath it all, whom The Times of London decreed upon his death to be the most versatile of all the great figures of the English theater.
Download or read book Coward Plays 7 written by Noël Coward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-11-04 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Coward Plays 1 written by Noël Coward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-06-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first volume in the Coward Collection contains four plays written within a two year period when Coward and the century were still in their 20s. The volume is introduced by Sheridan Morley, Coward's first biographer. Hay Fever, a comedy of bad manners, concerns a weekend with friends of the Bliss family, who have all been invited independently for a weekend at their country house near Maidenhead. The Vortex was a controversial drama in its time, introducing drug-addiction onto the stage at a time when alcoholism was barely mentioned. Fallen Angels, which is written for two star actresses was described as 'degenerate', 'vile', 'obscene', 'shocking' - the second half of the play is entirely taken up with an alcoholic duologue between the two women. Easy Virtue is an elegant, laconic tribute to a lost world of drawing-room dramas, no other writer went more directly to the jugular of that moralistic, tight-lipped but fundamentally hypocritical 20s society. "He is simply a phenomenon, and one that is unlikely to occur ever again in theatre history" Terence Rattigan
Download or read book Coward Revue Sketches written by Noël Coward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-06-13 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1920s and 1930s Noël Coward mastered and defined the art of the revue sketch - short and often topical or satirical stage pieces, many of which were a lead-in to his famous songs. He wrote these sketches for the top revues of the 1920s and 1930s, including London Calling! (1923) and Cochrane's Revue of 1931. This volume collects Coward's best and most witty pieces, including Rain Before Seven, the only sketch he performed with Gertrude Lawrence, and the hilarious parody, Some Other Private Lives, in which Coward burlesques his own famous play, Private Lives. Also included are short one-act plays never before published. The collection includes an Introduction by Coward scholar Barry Day, setting the work in the context of its time and its dramatic form. A forgotten area of Coward's writing is now back in print.
Download or read book Coward Plays 2 written by Noël Coward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The plays in this volume demonstrate the extraordinary skill and versatility Coward's writing achieved in the late 1920s. The volume contains his best-loved classic, Private Lives, which was an immeditate hit when it was first staged in 1930. Coward's sparkling dialogue and repartee have ensured the play's popularity ever since. Of Bitter-Sweet in 1929 Noël Coward wrote that it was "a musical that gave me more complete satisfaction than anything else I had yet written. Not especially on acount of its dialogue or its lyrics or its music or its production but as a whole." The Marquise is an "eighteenth century comedy" filled with maids and duels, whilst Post-Mortem is a vilification of war that contains some of Coward's most powerful writing.
