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Remembering Coward
BROADWAY
A blithe spirit
Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, with its winsome wit and ironic sentiment, can again be seen on Broadway with a resplendent cast. On the night of the play's 1941 London premiere (which the playwright himself directed), Coward sat scribbling voluminous notes amid all the glitter and uncertainty. The play that had taken him only six days to write would run for several years, and later he himself would play the leading man with hilarious and deadly precision.
Those who knew Coward will always miss the energy and verve of his singular personality—he was so tart, taut, droll, oracular, and indefatigably professional. Some complained that he was always "on," that he sailed through social occasions as if performing for an audience. But why not? The art of articulate comic improvisation is a rare one, and when on form, Coward was irresistible.
I'll always remember his extraordinary solo debut in Las Vegas in 1955. For him it was an unlikely setting, but the financial reward was high, and his bank account needed fortifying. The audience was large, affluent, genial, and somewhat square. As the houselights were lowered, Coward—a lonely, elegant, and slightly alien figure—stepped briskly into the single spotlight. He raised his hands in a gesture that was at once delicate and authoritative. Song followed song (all, of course, his own), delivered in his hoarse, alto, choirboy voice, all subtly nuanced and phrased with a funny but icy perfection. He soon had the audience at his feet, and finally on theirs.
In Blithe Spirit, Madame Arcati, the splendidly comic medium, summons characters back from the Great Beyond with devastating results. Would that at the Neil Simon Theatre she could, in the person of Geraldine Page, summon Noel—himself so blithe a spirit—to return with his Oriental grin and enjoy the applause which will surely greet his play once again.
Neil Simon Theatre. New York. (Opens 3/19)
PETER GLENVILLE
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