Word: cowardly
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...less serious but more widely ballyhooed British dance product was also on display in London last week: the first ballet of Playwright Noel Coward, titled London Morning. The 32-minute work was commissioned by Britain's Festival Ballet and was suggested to him, said Coward solemnly, by the nursery jingle, "Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?" To a tinkly, tearoom blend of Coward tunes, the curtain rose on a fantasticated façade of Buckingham Palace, at which an ice-cream-suited American was directing a battery of cameras. In quick succession, an Indian girl, a trio of tarts...
Enthusiastically applauded by a dressy first -night audience, the ballet was drubbed by the critics. "No amount of balletic license," said the Financial Times, "can really excuse this parade of cliche and low comedy." But Playwright-Composer-Actor Coward had an answer: "If I wrote for the critics, I would not be so happy-or so successful...
Barry Morse plays Tanner at Wellesley with all the elegant arts of a skilled high-comic actor. It is a brilliant, slick performance, full of gaiety and verve and a fast-talking grace reminiscent of Noel Coward. Mr. Morse is admirable as the quarry of the love-chase, the baffled and laughed-at talker, but there is more to the character than the excitable little man he gives us. The "Olympian majesty" specified by Shaw is missing; Tanner's magnificent brashness becomes mere cheek. Mr. Morse can lay down doctrine with considerable brio, but his John Tanner never seems committed...
...which "sophistication" may mean anything from talking like Noel Coward to owning a Diners' Club card, the plumed figure of La Rochefoucauld towers at an impressive altitude of worldliness. The eldest son (born in 1613) of an ancient and doughty French clan, François de la Rochefoucauld followed with vigor the customs of the royal court, which is to say he carried on a succession of tumultuous affairs with titled ladies, tangled in the incessant intrigues and wars of 17th century France, recovered twice from severe wounds, and at 66 died, as befitted a gentleman, of the gout...
This strange menage a trois tours France, and at first everything is reasonably decorous. But the inevitable happens: the painter falls for Mara's catlike face and supple body. Readers who follow the story this far will know that he is the sort of coward who kills the thing he loves with a kiss...