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Author: Noël Coward
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408162172
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 476
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Book Description
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: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408162172
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 476
Get Book Here
Book Description
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: Delphi Classics
ISBN: 1801702152
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 4567
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Book Description
The interwar English playwright Noël Coward is best known for his highly polished comedies of manners, including the enduring masterpieces ‘The Vortex’, ‘Hay Fever’, ‘Present Laughter’ and ‘Blithe Spirit’. His plays caught the clipped speech and brittle disillusion of the generation that emerged from the Great War, while his popular songs and revues struck the world-weary note of his times. An indefatigable genius, he performed almost every function in the theatre, including producing, directing, dancing, singing and acting, as well as directing motion pictures. This eBook presents Coward’s collected works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) Please note: some later plays, fiction and autobiographies cannot appear due to US copyright restrictions. When new works enter the public domain they will be added to the eBook as a free update. * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Coward’s life and works * Detailed introductions to the major texts * All 43 plays in the US public domain, with individual contents tables * Features rare dramas appearing for the first time in digital publishing * Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Rare revues available in no other collection * Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the short stories * Includes Coward’s satires and poetry * Ordering of texts into chronological order and genres CONTENTS: The Plays What Next? (1915) Woman and Whisky (1918) The Rat Trap (1918) I’ll Leave It to You (1919) The Young Idea (1921) Sirocco (1921) The Queen was in the Parlour (1922) Mild Oats (1922) Weatherwise (1923) Fallen Angels (1923) The Vortex (1923) Customs House, Dover (1923) Hay Fever (1924) Easy Virtue (1924) Semi-Monde (1926) This Was a Man (1926) The Marquise (1926) Home Chat (1927) Bitter Sweet (1928) Shop-Girls (1928) Private Lives (1929) Some Other Private Lives (1930) Conversation Piece (1933) Point Valaine (1934) Operette (1937) Present Laughter (1939) This Happy Breed (1939) Salute to the Brave/Time Remembered (1940) Blithe Spirit (1941) Pacific 1860 (1946) Peace in Our Time (1946) Long Island Sound (1947) South Sea Bubble (1949) Relative Values (1951) Quadrille (1951) After the Ball (1953) Nude with Violin (1954) Volcano (1957) Look After Lulu! (1958) Waiting in the Wings (1959) Sail Away (1959) The Girl Who Came to Supper (1963) Suite in Three Keys (1965) The Revues London Calling! (1923) On with the Dance (1924) This Year of Grace (1927) The Satires Terribly Intimate Portraits (1922) A Withered Nosegay (1922) Chelsea Buns (1925) The Poetry The Poetry of Noël Coward
Author: Russell Jackson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350246077
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
This is the first book-length work to draw extensively on unpublished archive material to document the composition and reception of some of Noël Coward's most significant plays. It examines his working practices as a playwright, from manuscript to performance. This study argues that, while he did not embrace any of the more radical theatrical 'isms' of his time, Coward experimented with both form and content. He adapted the familiar 'well-made' formulas, while also emphasizing theatrical self-consciousness and an exploration of radical social and sexual relationships. After an overview of Coward's career and the reception of his plays, the work discusses selected texts from successive phases of Coward's career, including some unproduced or uncompleted work and perennially popular plays such as The Vortex, Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Blithe Spirit and Present Laughter. This study also explores how, in the aftermaths of two world wars, as major changes in social and political circumstances suggested new approaches to dramaturgy, Coward's post-1945 work failed to achieve the same success he had enjoyed in earlier periods. The final chapter examines Coward's approach to his craft in response to the new theatrical and cultural environment, and the new freedom in the treatment of homosexuality represented by Suite in Three Keys and his final, uncompleted play, Age Cannot Wither.
Author: Noël Coward
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408177358
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 567
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Book 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.
Author: Alan Sinfield
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300081022
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428
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Book Description
This intriguing, authoritative book tracks stage representations of lesbians and gay men from Oscar Wilde to the present day and examines scores of British and American plays and playwrights, including works by Wilde, Maugham, Coward, Hellman, O'Neill, Le Roi Jones, and Joe Orton.
Author: Gene D. Phillips
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813138205
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 592
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Book Description
Two-time Academy Award winner Sir David Lean (1908--1991) was one of the most prominent directors of the twentieth century, responsible for the classics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965). British-born Lean asserted himself in Hollywood as a major filmmaker with his epic storytelling and panoramic visions of history, but he started out as a talented film editor and director in Great Britain. As a result, he brought an art-house mentality to blockbuster films. Combining elements of biography and film criticism, Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films of David Lean uses screenplays and production histories to assess Lean's body of work. Author Gene D. Phillips interviews actors who worked with Lean and directors who knew him, and their comments reveal new details about the director's life and career. Phillips also explores Lean's lesser-studied films, such as The Passionate Friends (1949), Hobson's Choice (1954), and Summertime (1955). The result is an in-depth examination of the director in cultural, historical, and cinematic contexts. Lean's approach to filmmaking was far different than that of many of his contemporaries. He chose his films carefully and, as a result, directed only sixteen films in a period of more than forty years. Those films, however, have become some of the landmarks of motion-picture history. Lean is best known for his epics, but Phillips also focuses on Lean's successful adaptations of famous works of literature, including retellings of plays such as Brief Encounter (1945) and novels such as Great Expectations (1946), Oliver Twist (1948), and A Passage to India (1984). From expansive studies of war and strife to some of literature's greatest high comedies and domestic dramas, Lean imbued all of his films with his unique creative vision. Few directors can match Lean's ability to combine narrative sweep and psychological detail, and Phillips goes beyond Lean's epics to reveal this unifying characteristic in the director's body of work. Beyond the Epic is a vital assessment of a great director's artistic process and his place in the film industry.
Author: Noël Coward
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307474879
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 626
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Book Description
The Noël Coward Reader offers a wonderfully wide-ranging selection—the first of its kind—of the best of the Master’s oeuvre, entertainingly annotated and abundantly illustrated, and including material that has never before been published. Here are scenes from Coward’s famous plays, from Private Lives to Blithe Spirit, and his screenplays, from Brief Encounter to In Which We Serve. Here are four of his best short stories, scenes from his only novel, and a generous selection of his verse, alongside the lyrics of many of his most sublime songs, including “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” “The Stately Homes of England,” and “Mad About the Boy.” The Noël Coward Reader is a must-have book both for those who adore his work and for those who are just discovering the many-faceted delights of his comic genius.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bibliography, National
Languages : en
Pages : 1028
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Book Description
Author: Noël Coward
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472503341
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
The Seventh volume in the Coward Collection. On Quadrille: "Miss Fontanne plays the madcap Marchioness with the crackle and sheen of a five-pound note. Her eyes mock marvelously, her voice cuts like a knife into a wedding cake, and the scene in Act Three, on the eve of her elopement with Mr. Lung, is as delicious as crushed ice." Evening Standard, 1952. "The idea of Peace in Our Time", Coward wrote "was conceived in Paris shortly after the Liberation. . . I began to suspect that the physical effect of four years intermittent bombing is far less damaging to the intrinsic character of a nation than the spiritual effect of four years enemy occupation." The volume also contains four pieces from the Tonight at 8.30 sequence: We Were Dancing "provides a marvelously compact illustration of the way the English public school spirit prevails even in moments of strenuous passion." "Shadow Play is a musical fantasy. . . which gave Gertie and me a chance to sing as romantically as we could, dance in the moonlight and, we hoped, convince the audience that we were very fascinating indeed"; and "Family Album - a sly satire on Victorian hypocrisy, adorned with an unobtrusive but agreeable musical score. It was stylised both in its decor and its performance, was a joy to play and provided the whole talented company with good parts." Star Chamber, closely based on Coward's experiences trying to co-ordinate his Actors' Orphanage charity committee, is published here for the first time.
Author: Noël Coward
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408162180
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
The plays in this volume demonstrate the extraordinary skill and versatility Coward's writing achieved in the late 1920s. The volume contains his best-loved classic, Private Lives, which was an immeditate hit when it was first staged in 1930. Coward's sparkling dialogue and repartee have ensured the play's popularity ever since. Of Bitter-Sweet in 1929 Noël Coward wrote that it was "a musical that gave me more complete satisfaction than anything else I had yet written. Not especially on acount of its dialogue or its lyrics or its music or its production but as a whole." The Marquise is an "eighteenth century comedy" filled with maids and duels, whilst Post-Mortem is a vilification of war that contains some of Coward's most powerful writing.
