Keep calm and enjoy this caddish charmer
WHEN in doubt at the Theatre Royal, Bath, stage some Noel Coward. Sure enough, Present Laughter has come round in the rations again, and a pretty good production of it at that.
This is the 1939 Coward play about a theatrical galaxy whose ‘great glorious sun’ is West End star Garry Essendine, a man with 18 silk dressing gowns and almost as many lovers.
The show opens with a pretty little thing called Daphne (Daisy Boulton) tiptoeing round Essendine’s apartment in the morning in a pair of his pyjamas. She has become the latest adornment in his chaotically crowded life. Designer Simon Higlett has devised a sumptuous set: Essendine’s London lair is adorned with all the clutter and panache you would expect of a 40-year-old star of the stage: a piano, ashtrays, big fireplace, statues. Images of him and posters from his plays fill the walls. He sleeps upstairs, at the top of a spiral staircase.
Essendine is played by Samuel West — a strong performer, but is he perhaps these days a little too jowly to play such a magnet? Phyllis Logan is splendid as his ‘frightful old warship’ of a secretary, Monica. Essendine’s domestics include a maid who is a Scandinavian spiritualist (Sally Tatum, not exactly under-acting) and a spivvy valet (Martin Hancock).
Once some problems with volume were resolved on Wednesday, Rebecca Johnson was perfect as his estranged wife. Another technical distraction was a blue light or reflection on a table in the upstage hallway.
The pleasure of watching Present Laughter goes beyond the drolleries and the elegant costumes and even the nostalgia hit. We can now contemplate the autobiographical nature of the play — substitute Essendine’s women for Coward’s men. We thus see that Coward was being remarkably frank about his own selfishness.
HE WAS also taking a swipe at prigs who set themselves up as middle-class moralisers. Yet the story ends with Essendine returning to the wife who is so plainly the best thing in his life. Poor Noel. He hated to be judged yet he ached for humdrum domesticity.
Director Stephen Unwin has assembled a strong cast for this touring production. Look out not only for sweet Miss Boulton but also for Zoe Boyle, slinky in a bare-backed green velvet dress as temptress Joanna.
Toby Longworth and Jason Morell play Essendine’s producers. Patrick Walshe McBride is perhaps five per cent over the top as the deranged young playwright Roland Maule.
Essendine’s telephone and doorbell ring with yet more interruptions of his artistic sensibilities. Another back-of-the-hand to fevered brow. His creative life is becoming a vortex.
When the doorbell chimes yet again, he wails that it is no doubt ‘the Lord Chamberlain’ at his door. Back in 1939 that high officer of the kingdom could still censor plays thought to carry too low a moral tone.
Today, the sexual shenanigans of the Essendine apartment may seem tame, but the tension of multifarious amorous entanglements has not and will never abate.
MAGGIE TRUDEAU was the exciting, erratic wife of late Canadian prime minister Pierre. Her son, Justin, is Ottawa’s current PM.
Maggie, 29 years younger than Pierre, was 18 when he met her in Tahiti. They married quietly in 1971 and the PM’s glamorous wife became a media sensation. She was indiscreet, feisty, and had a fruity past — a slimmer cross between Cherie Blair and Karen Danczuk.
This one-woman biographical show, written in 1979, gives us three personalities: Maggie, Pierre and a journalist called Henry. Youthful Kelly Burke tries gamely to keep it interesting for its 85 minutes but she is not much helped by the script or budget direction (what a boring wardrobe!).
It flickers into life only when we hear her describe the moment when she fell for Pierre. Otherwise, disappointing.