Word: cowardly
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Present Laughter. A Noel Coward musical, lots of light amusement. In the Kirkland House JCR at 8 p.m., April 29-May1. Tickets...
...Coward wrote not for posterity but to create transitory excitement and comedy on the stage. He gave his characters humorous and theatrical lines which are meant to be played, heard, and enjoyed, but not puzzled over...
...part of Garry is a vehicle for a captivating actor to play up to the audience. Coward himself played the part--which he claimed as his "favorite"--when the play opened in England in 1942. Alden Wentworth Watson fills the role well enough, though his characterization is somewhat lacking in variation and nuance...
Present Laughter is especially interesting as a period piece, for it represents a style of comedy that is no longer written for the stage. Noel Coward was a member of the British aristocratic leisure class and his characters were reflections of his own lifestyle. These days the stock medium for these characters is satire. Their frivolous preoccupation with style and good form seems merely ludicrous. They are difficult to identify with so it now seems more appropriate to laugh at them rather than with them. But despite these changes in attitude, Present Laughter is still an effective comedy because Coward...
...Noel Coward is a legendary figure in the annals of theatrical history. In this most fickle of professions, he could do it all. He wrote plays and musicals, and he acted in them. He proceeded in all his endeavors with the conviction that above all theater should be entertaining. At one point in Present Laughter Garry says to one of his amours, "You're in love with an illusion, the illusion that I gave you when you saw me on stage." For Noel Coward, the business of theater was to create that kind of illusion. The Kirkland House Drama Society...