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 198 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 Nine written by Noël Coward and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coward Plays: 9 offers up a fascinating selection of Noël Coward's lesser-known works. Salute to the Brave/Time Remembered (1940) follows Leila Heseldyne after she has fled to America, leaving a war-torn Britain and her husband behind; Long Island Sound(1947) sees a writer coerced into a riotous flock of high flying society people with turbulent results; and Volcano (1957) depicts a volcanic eruption as it punctuates the dubious conduct of six individuals on a fictional South Sea island. This volume also includes Design for Rehearsing (1933) was Coward's private satire on the way he , Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne worked on Design for Living. Age Cannot Wither (1967), Coward's last and unfinished play completes the collection as it portrays the boozy reunion of three women in their sixties, who meet without fail every year to reminisce. Together, these works offer a new and intriguing insight into Coward the playwright and his oeuvre that extends well beyond his most well-known works such as Private Lives, Blithe Spirit and Hay Fever. The volume is introduced by Coward expert and scholar Barry Day.

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 Present Laughter written by Noël Coward and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-05-04 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An honest, even profound reflection on the price of fame, with some genuine sexual frisson and an undercurrent of pathos." - The Hollywood Reporter At the centre of his own universe sits matinee idol Garry Essendine: suave, hedonistic and too old, says his wife, to be having numerous affairs - his line of harmless, infatuated debutantes is largely tolerated but playing closer to home is not. Just before he escapes on tour to Africa the full extent of his misdemeanours is discovered... and all hell breaks loose. Noël Coward's Present Laughter premiered in the early years of the Second World War just as such privileged lives were threatened with fundamental social change, and remains one of the playwright's most enduring hits. 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 Russell Jackson.

Download or read book No l Coward on and in Theatre written by Noël Coward and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noël Coward on theatre was as dazzling and entertaining as his masterful plays and lyrics. Here his ideas and opinions on the subject are brilliantly brought together in an extraordinary collection of commentary, lyrics, essays, and asides on everything having to do with the theatre and Coward's dazzling life in it. The book Noël Coward wanted, promised, threatened to write—and never did. Including essays, interviews, diary entries, verse, his views on his fellow playwrights: "My Colleague Will," Shaw, Wilde, Chekhov, Barrie, Maugham, Eliot, Osborne, Albee, Beckett, Miller, Williams, Rattigan, Pinter, and Shaffer. Coward on the critics—many of whom irritated him over the years but came to admire him: James Agate, Alexander Woollcott, Graham Greene, Kenneth Tynan among them. And on the plays he wrote, among them: The Vortex; Hay Fever; Private Lives; Design For Living; Blithe Spirit. Here is the Master on the producers who crossed his path: André Charlot, C. B. Cochran, Binkie Beaumont. And the actors in the Coward galaxy: John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Gertrude Lawrence, the Lunts, etc. . . . His views on the art of acting: auditions, rehearsals, learning the lines, clarity of delivery, timing, control, range, stage fright, fans, theater audiences, revivals, comedy, "the Method," plays with a "message," taste, construction, "Star Quality," etc. . . . And last, but Noël Coward least, his experience in, and thoughts on: revue, cabaret, television, and musical theater, Bitter Sweet, Conversation Piece, Pacific 1860, After the Ball, Ace of Clubs, Sail Away, The Girl Who Came to Supper, Words and Music, This Year of Grace, London Calling! . . . and much more. Ingeniously, deftly compiled, edited, and annotated by Barry Day, Coward authority and editor of The Noёl Coward Reader and The Letters of Noёl Coward.

Download or read book The Vortex written by Noël Coward and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-05-11 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The roaring twenties. A world in flux. The magnetic Florence Lancaster draws people to her like moths to a flame. But when her son Nicky arrives home from Paris with an unexpected fiancée and a secret, it sets off a chain of events which threatens to pull them all into a maelstrom. Noël Coward's brilliantly witty and stinging portrait of the darkness beneath the glittering surface of the Jazz Age is as vivid today as when it premiered, causing a sensation and catapulting its young writer to his first great success. This revised edition returns to Coward's original drafts and was published to coincide with Chichester Festival Theatre's new production directed by Daniel Raggett and starring Lia Williams and Joshua James, in April 2023.

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 254 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.

Download or read book No l Coward written by Russell Jackson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-04-21 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book-length work to draw extensively on unpublished archive material to document the composition and reception of some of Noël Coward's most significant plays. It examines his working practices as a playwright, from manuscript to performance. This study argues that, while he did not embrace any of the more radical theatrical 'isms' of his time, Coward experimented with both form and content. He adapted the familiar 'well-made' formulas, while also emphasizing theatrical self-consciousness and an exploration of radical social and sexual relationships. After an overview of Coward's career and the reception of his plays, the work discusses selected texts from successive phases of Coward's career, including some unproduced or uncompleted work and perennially popular plays such as The Vortex, Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Blithe Spirit and Present Laughter. This study also explores how, in the aftermaths of two world wars, as major changes in social and political circumstances suggested new approaches to dramaturgy, Coward's post-1945 work failed to achieve the same success he had enjoyed in earlier periods. The final chapter examines Coward's approach to his craft in response to the new theatrical and cultural environment, and the new freedom in the treatment of homosexuality represented by Suite in Three Keys and his final, uncompleted play, Age Cannot Wither.

Download or read book Coward Playwright written by John Lahr and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Design for Living written by Noël Coward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-05-08 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The actual facts are so simple. I love you. You love me. You love Otto. I love Otto. Otto loves you. Otto loves me. There now! Start to unravel from there.' Design for Living is a wickedly witty dark romantic comedy by Noel Coward. Initially banned in the UK, this provocative play portrays three amoral, glib and stylish characters and their hopelessly inescapable, if also unconventional, emotional entanglement. 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. They are trapped in what Coward called 'a three-sided erotic hodge podge.' With Coward's trademark piquant style, this lively, funny but also atypical play looks at dazzling, egotistical creatures and their self-destructive dependence on each other. Exploring themes of bisexuality, celebrity, success and self-obsession, Design for Living is a stylish and scandalous comedy.

Download or read book Selected Musical Plays by No l Coward A Critical Anthology written by Noël Coward and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-08-25 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Letters of Noel Coward written by Noël Coward and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-03-10 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lavishly illustrated and annotated, this first and definitive collection of letters to and from Coward provides a divine portrait of an age, from the Blitz to the Ritz and beyond. The incomparable Noël Coward loved to correspond with friends, enemies, the famous and infamous, the talented and the powerful, including Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill, Greta Garbo, Laurence Olivier, Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Lawrence of Arabia, Somerset Maugham, and many more. Granted unlimited access to the Coward archive, Barry Day presents many never-published letters and has unearthed new, startling evidence of Coward's wartime work as a spy. Along with 191 rare photographs, these letters bring to life the people and events that shaped the twentieth century—and a remarkable man who made his own indelible mark at the heart of it.

Download or read book Coward Plays 6 written by Noël Coward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Hoare, in his biography of Coward described Semi-Monde as his "most daring play to date. In a chic Parisian hotel, a series of sexual pairings take place through rendezvous, arguments, infidelities and reconciliations: sexual deviance is undisguised...set in the bisexual 1920s, the play could easily be populated by characters of Coward's society". Point Valaine is "the drama of a lurid episode of lust in the semi-tropics.. unmistakably the work of a master of the stage" (New York Times); South Sea Bubble which concerns "the Governor's lady in the Isle of Samolo who plays with native fire, nearly gets her wings singed, bashes her native admirer with a bottle and at one of those Coward next-morning-at breakfast scenes slips her way out of the scrape with feline grace." (Manchester Guardian) whilst Nude With Violin is a witty comedy about art fraud.

Download or read book Present Indicative written by Noël Coward and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I was photographed naked on a cushion very early in life, an insane, toothless smile slitting my face and pleats of fat overlapping me like an ill-fitting overcoat. Later, at the age of two, I was photographed again. This time in a lace dress, leaning against a garden roller and laughing hysterically. If these photographs can be found they will adorn this book." Thus begins the life story of one of the most celebrated characters in British theatrical history, in the first of Coward's autobiographies, first published in 1937. Displaying an early dedication to the theatre, Present Indicative hints at the success that would come to Coward as actor, playwright, novelist and performer. Each line is punctuated with his trademark effervescent wit, making this book a comic tour de force in it's own right, as well as a "must read" for anyone with an interest in the British stage. "He is simply a phenomenon, and one that is unlikely to occur ever again in theatre history" Terence Rattigan

Download or read book No l Coward written by Sheridan Morley and published by Haus Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accessible and affordable illustrated biography

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 No l Coward written by Milton Levin and published by Macmillan Reference USA. This book was released on 1989 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides in-depth analysis of the life, works, career, and critical importance of Noel Coward.