Word: cowardly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Quadrille brought the Lunts back to Broadway in a Noel Coward period piece they had played for two seasons in London. It is, for Coward, rather Victorian in spirit as well as in setting; it scents its sinfulness with lavender, bodices its escalades in whalebone. The story takes a long evening to unfold, but can be summarized in a sentence. A marchioness and an American rail baron pursue their eloping spouses (Edna Best and Brian Aherne), fall in love while separating the lovers, and themselves elope in turn...
Wearing Cecil Beaton's bright costumes, traversing a brilliant Beaton drawing-room, the Lunts play Quadrille to the hilt. The only trouble is that there is no blade. The play's light volleys of wit come from a Coward who only plays doubles and no longer will go to the net; from a Coward who has written more like some fondly reminiscing oldster than a mocking enfant terrible-and with an oldster's fearful garrulousness. But however unthinkable Quadrille would be without the Lunts, with them Coward's very mildness is not altogether unwelcome...
...WITHOUT QUALITIES, VOL. II (454 pp.)-Robert Musil-Coward-McCann...
LEOPARDS AND LILIES, by Alfred Duggan (278 pp.; Coward-McCann; $3.50), finds a veteran historical novelist taking the field for the English against France in the time of bad King John. Lady Margaret fitzGerold, a highborn widow, is forced into an unwelcome marriage with Sir Falkes de Brealte, a Norman bastard and the best crossbowman in all England. Margaret, a practical woman of 14, runs Falkes's castle, appreciates his long absences from home, and is only mildly annoyed when he scolds her for lowering the drawbridge too slowly. Lady Margaret survives the harrowing siege of Bedford...
Spectacular No. 4 (Mon. 8 p.m., NBC) was the best spectacular yet. Directed by Hollywood's Otto Preminger and starring Ginger Rogers in three short plays by Noel Coward, the show started slowly with a vaudeville skit that was notable for the expertness of Ginger's cockney accent. The second playlet, Still Life, co-starred Ginger with Britain's Trevor Howard, but it lacked the pathos of either the 1936 Broadway original (starring Noel Coward and the late Gertrude Lawrence) or the movie version, Brief Encounter. But in the third number, Shadow Play, Ginger was romantically believable...