Present Laughter
By Noël Coward
Directed by Belinda Lang
At Richmond Theatre 18th – 23rd January
Belinda Lang directs Robert Bathurst in this revival of a Noël Coward classic from his ‘middle period’. Mr Bathurst and the others give superb performances, particularly Serena Evans, as they breathe new life into a play that very nearly passed us by. This is a very good production and apart from some very superb performances there is a sumptuous set and some very funny witticisms, delivered with panache, but I was left wondering how much more could have been delivered by Mr Coward when he first wrote the play.
The play was originally written in 1939, but other world events intervened so that the play did not get presented until 1942. Noël Coward by this time was into his war time mode with This Happy Breed and the film In Which We Serve as well as one of truly classic plays, Blithe Spirit. Garry Essendine, the lead character, is a very vain egotistical man, who is incredibly successful on the stage and incredibly successful at enticing eager young things back to his apartment for the night, where whatever else has happened, they spend the night in the spare room and the pieces are picked up by his servants, the housekeeper played by Virginia Stride and the valet by played by Rikki Chamberlain, and his secretary played by the director Belinda Lang. The young girl, in production played by Dorothea Myer-Bennett is then ushered out without the great man being disturbed, to be replaced the intricate weave of wife, lovers, friends and business associates that passes for real life for Garry Essendine. Belinda Lang is a real enthusiast for Coward and she needs to be to keep a track through this convoluted world and to make sure that the lines, which are genuinely funny, are delivered finely and the audience responds with laughter, as they did.
I did find the play itself overcomplicated and too many of the relationships introduced and then dispatched, or rather just left hanging without any more development. Noël Coward was a talented craftsman of a playwright and this play does have moments of true talent. There is a wonderful cyclical symmetry in the four acts and for the time, a real edginess concerning the relationships that must have tested the Lord Chamberlain and yet, given a different time, how much more could have been made of this play. I am very much of the opinion that the best plays written by Noël Coward are either at the start or at the end of his career. The Vortex, Design for Living, Hay Fever are fantastic examples of a playwright really testing human relationships. At the other end, the plays contained in Suite in Three Keys are the mark of gifted playwright at the peak of his craftsmanship that did not care what the critics thought of the piece. If Present Laughter was to be written now I am sure that he would have concentrated upon fewer of these convoluted relationships. Perhaps just the spaghetti of intrigue around his wife, business associates, prospective lover and secretary. Or maybe his vanity and young lover where there is just the suggestion that there may well be a link to his past indiscretions, possibly with her mother or maybe just the possible infatuation with the young boy. But that is just me writing and what we have is what he did write.
Reviewed by Evan Rule
