Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Noel Coward Theatre Hay Fever by Noel Coward

By Billy Ockley


For the first time because its renaming and refurbishment, one of Noel Coward's most well-known plays is going to be performed at the Noel Coward Theatre. Howard Davies is to direct Lindsay Duncan in Coward's HAY FEVER, reuniting the director and actor who together received seven main international theatre awards for their 2001 collaboration on Coward's Private Lives. Duncan is joined by Jeremy Northam, Kevin McNally and Olivia Coleman in Coward's sublime comedy of bad manners.

Hay Fever is a comic play written by Noel Coward in 1924 and 1st produced in 1925 with Marie Tempest as the very first Judith Bliss. Laura Hope Crews played the role in New York. Greatest described as a cross in between high farce as well as a comedy of manners, the play is set in an English country house inside the 1920s, and deals using the 4 eccentric members of the Bliss family and their outlandish behaviour once they each invite a guest to invest the weekend. The self-centred behaviour of the hosts lastly drives their guests to flee whilst the Blisses are so engaged in a household row that they don't notice their guests' furtive departure.

Some writers have noticed components of Mrs. Astley Cooper and her set in the characters of the Bliss family members. Coward said that the actress Laurette Taylor was the main model. Coward introduces one of his signature theatrical devices in the finish of the play, exactly where the 4 guests tiptoe out as the curtain falls, leaving disorder behind them - a device that he also utilised in different types in Present Laughter, Private Lives and Blithe Spirit.

Originally known as the New Theatre, then The Albery, The Noel Coward Theatre was built by Sir Charles and Mary Wyndham and opened on 12 March 1903. In 1915 Dion Boucicault presented a Christmas revival of J M Barrie's Peter Pan, which, as a result of its reputation was repeated each year till 1919. It also staged a number of productive productions by other distinguished writers which includes Somerset Maugham, A A Milne, Noel Coward, Bernard Shaw, Dylan Thomas, T S Eliot and Tennessee Williams. The sixties were dominated by Lionel Bart's Oliver! which ran for 2618 performances.

A host of renowned names have appeared on-stage at the theatre such as Sir John Gielgud, Sybil Thorndike, Sir Laurence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft and several far more.
In 1973 the New Theatre was renamed the Albery in tribute towards the late Sir Bronson Albery who had presided over its fortunes for many years. The Noel Coward Theatre has observed productions as diverse as Somerset Maugham's The Continuous Wife, Young children of a Lesser God by Mark Medoff, Tom Stoppard's Travesties and Willy Russell's Blood Brothers.

Sir Noel Peirce Coward (16 December 1899 - 26 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, recognized for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine known as "a sense of personal style, a mixture of cheek and chic, pose and poise".

Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, generating his expert stage dbut in the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays could be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, for example Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Present Laughter and Blithe Spirit, have remained in the standard theatre repertoire. He composed hundreds of songs, along with well over a dozen musical theatre works (including the operetta Bitter Sweet and comic revues), poetry, a number of volumes of short stories, the novel Pomp and Circumstance, along with a three-volume autobiography. Coward's stage and film acting and directing career spanned six decades, for the duration of which he starred in several of his own works.

At the outbreak of Globe War II, Coward volunteered for war function, operating the British propaganda office in Paris. He also worked with the Secret Service, searching for to make use of his influence to persuade the American public and government to help Britain. Coward won an Academy Honorary Award in 1943 for his naval film drama, In Which We Serve, and was knighted in 1969. In the 1950s he achieved fresh achievement as a cabaret performer, performing his own songs, including "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", "London Pride" and "I Went to a Marvellous Party".

His plays and songs achieved new popularity within the 1960s and 1970s, and his perform and style continue to influence well-known culture. Coward didn't publicly acknowledge his homosexuality, but it was discussed candidly following his death by biographers which includes Graham Payn, his long-time partner, and in Coward's diaries and letters, published posthumously. The former Albery Theatre (originally the New Theatre) in London was renamed the Nol Coward Theatre in his honour in 2006.




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