The Noel Coward Reader
Edited and with commentary by Barry Day. Foreword by Cameron Mackintosh.Alfrd A. Knopf, 2010. 599 pages.
In Finishing the Hat, Sondheim is openly dismissive of Noel Coward, and not just casually so. The younger composer (now 80—Coward died in 1973 at age 73) turns Coward into a icon of fluff, a name to conjure up only when discussing superficial songwriting of a transitory nature.
The Noel Coward Reader, happily coincidentally released around the same as Sondheim’s book, is a reasoned and overwhelming response to such tenuous criticism of one of the best known theater artists of the 20th century. The Reader even strangely shares roughly the same format as Finishing the Hat: lyrics and scripts extracts annotated with anecdotes, historical information and obscure bonus items. Neither book is a mere “best of” or “collected works.” Each is overloaded with trivia, tangents and strong opinions that have rarely surfaced in other biographies until now. Where Sondheim’s book has the more contemporary voice, what with his still alive and all, the long-dead Coward’s is astonishingly vital. He has ready comments on everything, because whereas Sondheim has never published a memoir before this, Coward kept voluminous diaries (published a couple of years ago as edited by the same respectful hand that guides this Reader, Barry Day) and journals, not to mention a two-volume autobiography.
Other stats:
Sondheim: around 20 musicals (a couple of them as lyricist only) plus half a dozen revues, a handful of songs that didn’t make it into shows and a few original film and TV scripts.
Coward: Half a dozen musicals, at least as many revues, over 30 full-length plays, a popular three-night compendium of ten one-act plays, over two hundred stand-alone songs and a few original film and TV scripts. Plus his simultaneous career as a performer—in films by others, in many of his own works, and in his famous cabaret appearances.
Coward’s prolificity might indeed speak to a less perfectionist mood. But he was more of a risktaker than many believed, and his commercial and critical successes were well-earned. His shows, when done today, tend to impress those who think of them as fluffy. The main response I get from artistic directors when I wonder aloud why, outside of Private Lives and Blithe Spirit and Design for Living, more Coward plays and musicals aren’t produced these days, is an economic excuse: the casts are too big. That’s the common reasoning behind the lack of Shaw revivals as well, and few would regard Shaw as lightweight or outdated or unable to be fitted for contemporary audiences. But the image of Coward’s works as hopelessly of their time, or “thin” (a criticism he endured, and articulately addressed during his lifetime, much more amusingly than Sondheim deflects charges of being obtuse or overly complex). This book shows conclusively that while his works may be, and usually are, played lightly, they weren’t written haphazardly. There’s little doubt that Coward’s scripts could stand up to some pretty wild directorial and design-conscious reinterpretations—they just tend not to be looked at that way, though the recent Broadway success of Brief Encounter (a stage adaptation of the era-defining 1945 David Lean film which grew out of the Coward one-act Still Life) seems to be a step in that direction. Maybe someday Coward will be as freely and friskily interpreted as some of the later Sondheim works.
As for interpreters, Sondheim can rave about the glories of Elaine Stritch, but Coward got there first, jumpstarting her career with a role in his revue Sail Away. And Follies or A Little Night Music may be credited with finding great roles for seasoned stars in the twilight of their careers, but Coward was doing the same sort of conscientious casting decades earlier with “Hay Fever,” Waiting in the Wings,” “A Song at Twilight” and other age-appropriate works.
As to the comparative charms of Finishing the Hat and the Noel Coward Reader, Sondheim writes a lot about his own writing process, but Coward was involved in many of his own shows as not just writer and composer but star. This makes a book like this, even without his direct involvement, much more vibrant. The sheer variety of material available is exhilarating, a chance to rediscover this multi-threat artist’s talent on many levels. There are lyrics, extra verses, script extracts, lesser-known script extracts, bits of screenplays, essays, memoirs, correspondence, profiles of his collaborators, even a culminating poem about mortality and a self-penned epitaph.
Coward’s commentary on some shows takes the takes the form of self-mocking scripts. “Design for Rehearsing” is a sketch about what it’s like to work with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine, married actors so attuned to each others’ methods that they could be oblivious to the needs of their other co-stars, even their dear friend (and indeed, their guiding playwright) Noel Coward.
Coward was also much more self-critical and aware concerning the tone and depth of his shows than Sondheim gives him credit for being. While acknowledging its popular success, he deplored Margaret Rutherford’s portrayal of the séance-leader Madame Arcati in the original production of Blithe Spirit. Coward noted the dark undercurrents of many of his plays, explains how he began fashioning them more for longterm impact than as a string of one-liners. Whether in dramas or comedies, he wasn’t afraid to tackle themes of adultery, war, sexual incompatibility and the afterlife. He also writes as smartly about backstage strife and preparation as anyone short of, say, Stanislavsky, whom he’s also much funnier than. Not only do we get the lyrics “Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs. Worthington” along with a quote stating that the song’s intention to dissuade stage mothers from inflicting their young on audiences was to be taken seriously, we get the newspaper piece “A Warning to Actors,” as well as its companion piece “A Warning to Critics” and a paragraph from “A Warning to Pioneers” (i.e. playwrights).
What ends up being remarkable about The Noel Coward Reader is how effortlessly it dispels any sense of Coward as a minor or fleeting talent. It is a testament to his range, his flair, his outspokenness and openness, and his deserved bid for theater immortality.