Noël Coward combines a fresh appraisal of major plays by one of the twentieth century’s most popular dramatists, with an account of critical and theatrical responses to his life and work.
For almost the entirety of the Twentieth Century, Noël Coward was one of the UK’s most popular and celebrated playwrights. Refracting, rather than directly reflecting the social and personal issues of his time, his plays reveal tensions and contradictions in the theatre world that surrounded them. As well as critical responses to his work and the key themes that it foregrounds, seminal productions of The Vortex, Private Lives, Design for Living, Hay Fever, Blithe Spirit and more are examined to further elaborate on the radicalism of his approach to personal and social relationships, and the ways in which directors and actors have sought to achieve a sense of the disquiet felt by critics and audiences when they were first produced. This book explores the question of what Coward’s work can speak to for today’s modern audiences, assessing his standing in terms of how conditions have changed in the theatre and society more broadly since they were written.
Part of the Routledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatists series, Noël Coward provides undergraduate students on Theatre Studies degrees and Modern Drama courses an essential and accessible guide to the playwright’s work and illustrates the influence of his drama on what theatre can tell us about our society.
Part 1: Life, career, reputation 1. A Career in the theatre 2. Coward and the Critics 3. Comedy and convention: Hay Fever, Present Laughter and Blithe Spirit 4. Passion, transgression and sexuality: The Vortex, Semi-Monde, Private Lives, Design for Living and Still Life/Brief Encounter 5. Nostalgia, empire and class: Cavalcade, This Happy Breed, ‘Peace in Our Time’, Relative Values and South Sea Bubble Part 2: Key plays and productions 6. Degrees of decadence: The Vortex and Semi-Monde 7. Style, sex and violence: Private Lives 8. Variations on a ‘daring play’: Design for Living
Biography
Russell Jackson is Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Birmingham, UK. His publications include The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on film (2007), Shakespeare Films in the Making (2007), Theatres on Film: How the Cinema Imagines the Stage (2013), Shakespeare and the English-speaking Cinema (2014), Shakespeare in the Theatre: Trevor Nunn (2018), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen (2020), and Noël Coward: The Playwright’s Craft in a Changing Theatre (2022).
