Word: cowardly
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Private Lives is the highest level of British fluff, written by Noel Coward, directed by John Gielgud, starring Maggie Smith and John Standing. A custardy respite from reading period. At the Shubert Theater through Saturday night only...
Whatever the reason, the actor's outburst that Churchill was a despicable coward and an overriding dictator, in fact, "a medieval bandit king," met with more puzzlement than outrage in England. Said Churchill's grandson Winston: "When I had lunch with Burton recently, he almost thought he was Churchill." As for Burton, he issued a rambling apology, if not a retraction...
PRIVATE LIVES by NOEL COWARD...
...fiendishly theatrical people who wear their ennui with ill-concealed hysteria. Having suffered the raptures and torments of marriage to each other, they put their hearts in a deep freeze. Divorced for several years, they are each on second honeymoons, having married two dolts from dullsville. All Coward plays are divided between two sets of people-bright, neurotic sophisticates and starchy, phlegmatic dumbos. Amanda and Elyot and their spouses meet on the adjoining verandas of a French Riviera hotel, and in no time at all Amanda and Elyot are making the glottal sounds of love again...
...explain why London, not New York, remains the greater hub of theatrical activity. Shaffer is writing for an avid theatergoing public. "The English have a reverence for theater," he says. "They all want to be actors." Shaffer knows that audience viscerally. In this respect he resembles Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan, both of whom managed to write hits about such then queasy subjects as drug addiction (The Vortex) and homosexuality (Ross). Like them, Shaffer possesses an apparently flawless intuition about how much he can shock the audience without turning it off. Coming from a nation that reveres horses...