Coward Plays 4

Author : Noël Coward
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 511 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2013-11-12
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781408177341

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Coward Plays: 4 by Noël Coward Pdf

Volume Four of Noël 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 Noël 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 8.30 - 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.

Author : Noël Coward
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 145 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2023-05-04
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781350353688

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Design for Living by Noël Coward Pdf

"Its fusion of passion and mischief remains striking and there is something undeniably heady about its celebration of a kind of sexual liberation that looks a lot like flippancy" - Evening Standard From 1930s bohemian Paris to the dizzying heights of Manhattan society, a tempestuous love triangle unravels between a vivacious interior designer, Gilda, playwright Leo and artist Otto - three people unashamedly and passionately in love with each other. But can such a lavish love affair survive the real world? Exploring themes of bisexuality, celebrity, success and self-obsession, Design for Living is a stylish and scandalous comedy, that is often revered as Coward's most controversial and risqué work. This new edition is published in Methuen Drama's iconic Modern Classics series to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Coward's death and features a new introduction by Oliver Soden.

Author : Noël Coward
Publisher : Methuen Drama
Page : 488 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 1999-03
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0413734307

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Coward Plays by Noël Coward Pdf

Author : Noël Coward
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2013-12-02
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781408177310

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Coward Plays: 1 by Noël Coward Pdf

This first volume in the Coward Collection contains four plays written within a two year period when Coward and the century were still in their 20s. The volume is introduced by Sheridan Morley, Coward's first biographer. Hay Fever, a comedy of bad manners, concerns a weekend with friends of the Bliss family, who have all been invited independently for a weekend at their country house near Maidenhead. The Vortex was a controversial drama in its time, introducing drug-addiction onto the stage at a time when alcoholism was barely mentioned. Fallen Angels, which is written for two star actresses was described as 'degenerate', 'vile', 'obscene', 'shocking' - the second half of the play is entirely taken up with an alcoholic duologue between the two women. Easy Virtue is an elegant, laconic tribute to a lost world of drawing-room dramas, no other writer went more directly to the jugular of that moralistic, tight-lipped but fundamentally hypocritical 20s society. "He is simply a phenomenon, and one that is unlikely to occur ever again in theatre history" Terence Rattigan

Author : Noel Coward
Publisher : [New York] : Dell Publishing Company
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 1965
Category : Actresses
ISBN : STANFORD:36105049237469

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Three Plays by Noel Coward: Blithe Spirit, Hay Fever [and] Private Lives by Noel Coward Pdf

Blithe Spirit is a comic play by Noël Coward, described by the author as "an improbable farce in three acts". The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book.

Author : Noel Coward
Publisher : Samuel French, Inc.
Page : 76 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 1958
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0573608806

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Fallen Angels by Noel Coward Pdf

The love and friendship between two married couples and best friends are put to the test when a postcard arrives with a picture of Capri on one side, and on the other, news of the imminent arrival of a certain handsome Frenchman.

Author : Noël Coward
Publisher : Knopf
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2021-11-02
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780525657965

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Noël Coward on (and in) Theatre by Noël Coward Pdf

Noël Coward on theatre was as dazzling and entertaining as his masterful plays and lyrics. Here his ideas and opinions on the subject are brilliantly brought together in an extraordinary collection of commentary, lyrics, essays, and asides on everything having to do with the theatre and Coward's dazzling life in it. The book Noël Coward wanted, promised, threatened to write—and never did. Including essays, interviews, diary entries, verse, his views on his fellow playwrights: "My Colleague Will," Shaw, Wilde, Chekhov, Barrie, Maugham, Eliot, Osborne, Albee, Beckett, Miller, Williams, Rattigan, Pinter, and Shaffer. Coward on the critics—many of whom irritated him over the years but came to admire him: James Agate, Alexander Woollcott, Graham Greene, Kenneth Tynan among them. And on the plays he wrote, among them: The Vortex; Hay Fever; Private Lives; Design For Living; Blithe Spirit. Here is the Master on the producers who crossed his path: André Charlot, C. B. Cochran, Binkie Beaumont. And the actors in the Coward galaxy: John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Gertrude Lawrence, the Lunts, etc. . . . His views on the art of acting: auditions, rehearsals, learning the lines, clarity of delivery, timing, control, range, stage fright, fans, theater audiences, revivals, comedy, "the Method," plays with a "message," taste, construction, "Star Quality," etc. . . . And last, but Noël Coward least, his experience in, and thoughts on: revue, cabaret, television, and musical theater, Bitter Sweet, Conversation Piece, Pacific 1860, After the Ball, Ace of Clubs, Sail Away, The Girl Who Came to Supper, Words and Music, This Year of Grace, London Calling! . . . and much more. Ingeniously, deftly compiled, edited, and annotated by Barry Day, Coward authority and editor of The Noёl Coward Reader and The Letters of Noёl Coward.

Author : Noël Coward
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2014-03-20
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781408177389

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Coward Plays: 8 by Noël Coward Pdf

The eighth volume in the Coward Collection includes I'll Leave It To You and The Young Idea, the first of Coward's plays ever to be produced. These were, as he said, "enthusiastically acclaimed by the critics and ran five weeks and eight weeks respectively. In both of them I appeared with the utmost determination." This Was a Man, a slightly later play, was written in 1926, after the successes which made his name. It was originally banned by the Lord Chamberlain "for facetious adultery".

Author : Noël Coward
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 107 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2023-05-04
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781350354128

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Hay Fever by Noël Coward Pdf

"This 1925 comedy of manners that's funny yet also unorthodox and unsettling... a celebration of abnormality and at the same time a disquieting study of both the pleasures and the pains of not being able to restrain oneself." - Evening Standard When four guests, all invited by different members of the Bliss family, arrive for a weekend at their country house near Maidenhead, they're expecting a idyllic retreat. But this peaceful promise is quickly trounced when the self-absorbed eccentricities of the Blisses are trained on the guests, who leave the country mansion humiliated and embarrassed. First produced in 1925, Hay Fever is a technical masterpiece, seamlessly combining high farce with a comedy of manners, and delivering Coward his first major commercial success. This new edition is published in Methuen Drama's iconic Modern Classics series to coincide with the 125th anniversary of Coward's birth and features a new introduction by Michael Billington.

Author : Noel Coward
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 358 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 1979
Category : English drama
ISBN : 0413460509

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Plays [of] Noël Coward by Noel Coward Pdf

Author : Noël Coward
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 576 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2014-03-20
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781408162125

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Coward Plays: 5 by Noël Coward Pdf

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.

Author : Noel Coward
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 114 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 1927
Category : Electronic
ISBN : IOWA:31858008573804

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The Marquise by Noel Coward Pdf

Author : Noël Coward
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 1999-01-01
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780413734006

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Coward Plays: 7 by Noël Coward Pdf

'Peace in Our Time' is a two-act play written in 1946 by Noël Coward. The play focuses on a small group of Londoners in a pub close to Sloane Square, in an alternate history where Nazi Germany won the Battle of Britain and successfully invaded and occupied the United Kingdom.

Author : Noel Coward
Publisher : Good Press
Page : 151 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2022-08-21
Category : Drama
ISBN : EAN:4064066428358

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The Vortex by Noel Coward Pdf

Published in 1924, "The Vortex" is a play in three acts by the English writer and actor Noël Coward. The play depicts the sexual vanity of a rich, ageing beauty, her troubled relationship with her adult son, and drug abuse in British society circles after the First World War. The son's cocaine habit is seen by many critics as a metaphor for homosexuality, then taboo in Britain. Despite, or because of, its scandalous content for the time, the play was Coward's first great commercial success.

Author : Roger Kojecky
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 195 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2024-05-06
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9783031522840

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Coward the Dramatist by Roger Kojecky Pdf