Word: cowardly
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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...
Garry is more or less a one-dimensional character. He is forever shown as the actor clinging to artifice. Noel Coward wrote the part with little concern for full-bodied characterization. His concern was rather to facilitate virtuoso dramatic performances...
Present Laughteris designed simply to entertain. Coward spoofs the "theater of ideas" advocated by Ibsen and Chekov in the character of Roland Maule, a young cuckoo-headed would-be playwright. Maule, a caricature of the "serious" dramatist, spouts streams of cliched arguments about "commercial theater," "intellectual significance,"and of course "posterity." Ironically Maule adores and admires Garry, who personified frivolous commercial theater...
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...