NOËL COWARD ON (AND IN) THEATRE

Writings by and about one of the 20th century’s most recognizable playwrights.

Anyone who saw 2-year-old Noël Coward (1899-1973) being “forcibly removed from church for spontaneously dancing in the aisle to accompany the hymn being played” would not have been surprised by his eventual success as an actor, a playwright of light comedies such as Private Lives and Blithe Spirit, and a songwriter of innumerable witty classics. He never completed a book about the theater, but Day, who has edited previous works about Coward, has done it for him by compiling his “published writings, interviews, plays, stories, verse, lyrics and other people’s reminiscences.” The result is an illuminating collection of anecdotes, encomiums, and gripes about actors such as Gertrude Lawrence, who, when they were 14, “gave me an orange and told me a few mildly dirty stories, and I loved her from then onwards”; fellow playwrights such as “My colleague Will” Shakespeare, Somerset Maugham, and Arthur Miller, whose Death of a Salesman was “boring and embarrassing”; and more. Coward could be rigid in his beliefs. He proclaimed “intolerance of what I call pretentiousness in the Theatre” and maintained the theatre “is primarily intended for entertainment,” an opinion that might intrigue those who feel entertainment is big enough to include Coward’s frothy comedies as well as grittier fare. Day sometimes forgets to orient readers. He notes that a Mrs. Astley-Cooper “was to prove something of a thread through [Coward’s] early years” but doesn’t say who she was. Theater fans, however, will savor this portrait of a confident artist (“I am probably the best comedian alive”) whose wit wasn’t confined to the stage. When a waiter rushed a fork to him at a cocktail party as Coward struggled to balance his drink and canapés, a fellow guest said, “How come YOU get a fork?” Coward’s droll reply: “Well, I did write Cavalcade, you know.”

An entertaining peek behind the curtain at 60 years in the theater.