Plays

Author(s)

• Coward, Noel

Bibliographic Information

Plays

Noël Coward ; introduced by Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson

（The Master playwrights）

Methuen, 1979

• one: pbk.
• one
• two: pbk
• two
• three: pbk.
• three
• four: pbk.
• four
• five: pbk.

Contents of Works

• one: Hay fever
• one: The vortex
• one: Fallen angels
• one: Easy virtue
• two: Private lives
• two: Bitter-sweet
• two: The narquise
• two: Post-mortem
• three: Design for living
• three: Cavalcade
• three: Conversation piece
• three: Hands across the sea
• three: Still life
• three: Fumed oak
• three: To-night at 8.30(I)
• four: Blithe spirit
• four: Present laughter
• four: This happy breed
• four: To-night at 8.30(II)
• five: Relative values
• five: Look after Lulu
• five: Waiting in the wings
• five: Suite in three keys

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

four: pbk. ISBN 9780413461209

Description

Volume Four of Noel Coward's plays contains a selection of Coward's plays from the thirties and forties which includes Blithe Spirit, a comedy that centres around the spirit medium Madame Arcati. The play that mocks sudden death was produced at precisely the moment when bombs were bringing it to Britain "I shall ever be grateful, for the almost psychic gift that enabled me to write Blithe Spirit in five days during one of the darkest years of the war." The play was for years the longest-running comedy in the history of British theatre. Present Laughter follows the life of Garry Essendine, a world-weary, middle-aged projection of the dilettante, debonair persona - self-obsessed and dressing-gowned who struts through the play like an educated peacock. It is a comedy about the 'theatricals' that Noel best knew and loved, and was originally a star vehicle for himself. It is the closest to an autobiographical play that Coward ever wrote.This Happy Breed is a saga of a lower middle-class family; and three shorter pieces fromTonight at 8.3 0 - is a farce set in the South of France, and serves as an oblique tribute to Frederick Lonsdale; The Astonished Heart is about the decay of a psychiatrist's mind through personal sexual obsession. Red Peppers, which closes the volume, was a cynical tribute to the lost music halls of the First World War.

Table of Contents

• Blithe Spirit
• Present Laughter
• This Happy Breed
• Tonight at 8.30 (ii)

Volume

five: pbk. ISBN 9780413517401

Description

Containing Coward's best work from the last two decades of his life, this volume includes Relative Values, which ran for over a year in 1951-2, Look After Lulu (1959), his perennially popular Feydeau adaptation, Waiting in the Wings (1960), a bravura piece set in a home for retired actresses, and Suite in Three Keys (1965), a trilogy of plays which gave Coward his last roles on stage. The volume is introduced by Sheridan Morley, Coward's first biographer, and includes an extensive chronology of Coward's work.

Table of Contents

• Relative Values
• Look After Lulu
• Waiting in the Wings
• Suite in Three Keys

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BA04252144
• ISBN:
  • 0413461203
  • 0413461106
  • 0413517403
• Country Code: uk
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: London
• Pages/Volumes: 5 v.
• Size: 18 cm
• Classification:
  • DC19 : 822/.912
• Parent Bibliography ID:
  • BA00721775