Warm, respectful swing at a storied and fascinating life
Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward story (M, 91 mins) Directed by Barnaby Thompson Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ****
I’m a generation too young to really appreciate Noël Coward. But I’d like to think I’m not such a complete numpty that I can’t acknowledge that someone whose name is still a byword for a very specific sort of Englishness, and who still regularly appears on playbills and theatre hoardings the world over, must at least have a life-story worthy of a decent documentary.
And Coward’s, sure enough, is an absolute cracker.
Noël Coward was born near London in 1899. His father “lacked ambition and industry’’ apparently, but his mum was made of the right stuff and soon recognised that young Noël could hold a tune and thrived on attention.
Coward was introduced to dance and then acting. He made his stage debut at the age of 11 and seems never to have looked back, or seriously considered any life other than in, or near, the limelight.
He appeared on the stage consistently for the next decade, was judged to have a “tubercular tendency’’ which excused him from military service (I’m still trying to decide whether “tubercular tendency’’ is some droll army-office code for “queerer than a three-bob note’’) and had his first script produced by the time he was 20.
Coward went to New York the next year and was inspired by the shows he saw on Broadway to inject American pace and irreverence into the confines of British theatre. From about 1924 onwards, Coward was a titanically successful and prolific writer, performer and composer.
Decades after they were first produced, Hay Fever, Private Lives, Present Laughter and Blithe Spirit are all being performed somewhere in the world tonight, while Coward’s one-act play Still Life was expanded to become the script for the film
Brief Encounter, which, yes, I have seen, and it is perfect.
Director Barnaby Thompson (Pixie) has taken on the task of making a fulsome and informative documentary about Coward, I think, because it is about bloody time somebody did. His Mad About the Boy is an affectionate and respectful swing at a storied and fascinating life.
As a gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal, Coward lived in a kind of open secrecy. No-one who cared, or had a functioning brain-cell, was unaware that he was gay, but public displays of affection could still result in prosecution and purgatory. If Coward ever rightly raged against the hypocrisy and injustice of this, Thompson doesn’t find any evidence.
With narration by Alan Cumming, Rupert Everett dropping in to voice Coward’s written archive, appearances by Maggie Smith and Michael Caine, and a brisk 90-minute running-time, there is a lot here to like.
If you’re already a fan, then you’ll enjoy Mad About the Boy. And if you’re a feckless wastrel wondering what all the fuss was about, you’ll definitely get some answers. Recommended.