Word: cowardly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...writing for the London Sunday Times, James Agate commented that Noel Coward, "whether as dramatist or composer, has worked invariably for the passing moment, for the present laughter rather than the applause of posterity...Whatever he does, the effect is theatrical, greasepainted." These lines serve as an appropriate epigraph for Coward's life and work, and also for Kirkland House Drama Society's finely acted and tightly directed production of Coward's comedy Present Laughter...
Present Laughter is a light drawing room comedy, very proper and very British, much in the tradition of Oscar Wilde. As in the majority of Coward's plays, the plot is thin and somewhat contrived. The action transpires in the studio of star actor Garry Essendine, revolving around the amorous antics of the forty-ish stage idol and his claque of friends and admirers...
Short, one of the finest interpreters of Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Rodgers and Hart, and George Gershwin, has been playing his jazzy numbers for more than 40 years...
...Coward would have cherished the sequence, and quite possibly, the entire enchanting evening. T.E. Kalem
Gumbooted Bears. Ayckbourn is one of England's funniest, most prolific playwrights, with a fine ear for middle-class patterns of speech. Sometimes his dialogue snaps back like Noel Coward's; at others, he evokes P.G. Wodehouse's rococo style. It is a shame that this production fails to do him or Norman justice. A man who envisions Australia in winter as an army of gumbooted koala bears and who can find menace in his pajamas ("The tops are alright-it's the bottoms you've got to watch") must be lovable. Richard Benjamin...