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Selected Musical Plays by Noël Coward: A Critical Anthology

Author: Noël Coward

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-08-25

Total Pages: 553

ISBN-13: 1350234710

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lasting influence on the wider world of the British musical, Selected Musical Plays by Noël Coward contains previously unpublished musical plays by a central figure in theatre history, collected together with critical apparatus for students, scholars, and fans.

Noel Coward

Author: Noel Coward

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams

Published: 1998-11-01

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780879518967

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Celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of a prolific and talented songwriter. His lyrics seduced and satirized the lives of the Smart Set, depicting the world of high society and its high jinks. Some 475 songs are collected, with some published for the first time, and illustrated with 279 bandw photos and drawings, many from Coward's personal albums, as well as programs, sheet musics, photos from original productions and revivals, and Coward's own handwritten manuscripts. Text by the author, augmented by Coward's own comments, sets the songs in context of their productions and their times. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Coward Plays: 5

Author: Noël Coward

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-03-20

Total Pages: 567

ISBN-13: 1408177358

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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.

Coward Plays: 4

Author: Noël Coward

Publisher: Methuen Drama

Published: 1979-09-06

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 9780413461209

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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.