Noel Coward

I discovered this exhibition last week when I went up to Lincoln Center to see Paul Taylor.

In conjunction with the exhibition the city is hosting a number events.  Yesterday I went to a marvelous party with Barry Dey, Simon Callow, Edward Hibbert, Dana Ivey, and Steve Ross at the Drama Bookshop.  Mr. Dey, O. B. E. devised the event.

Noel Coward, 12/16/1899 - 3/26/1973 made his stage debut at 11.  Then he proceeded to write 50 plays, hundreds of songs, dozens of musical theater shows, books of poetry, volumes of short stories, a novel [Pomp and Circumstance], and a 3 volume autobiography.
His first play was produced when he was 20.  When he was 25 he had 4 shows playing on the West End, among them 'Hay Fever'.  His first movie 'Cavalcade' in 1933 won the Best picture Academy Award.

Yesterday's show:
Steve Ross began with a performance on the piano, in Noel Coward's green velour dinner jacket, of 'Mrs. Worthington don't let your daughter go on the stage'.
Then Dana Ivey quoted Coward: "People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be.  It is what it used to be.  That's what's wrong with it." Then she continued for 4 or 5 minutes reading a poem? or song lyric? about what's wrong with opera.  Hilarious.
And so the show continued:
Mr. Dey, trustee of the Noel Coward estate and writer on Coward and editor of his collected works, narrated.
Simon Callow ... an essay on theater as an edifice.
Simon Callow and Edward Hibbert as 2 playwrights of differing theatrical philosophies
Simon Callow ...  reading an epithet for an aging actress
Steve Ross performing    'Why must the show go on?'   & Edward Hibbert doing 'Been to a Marvelous Party'
Barry Dey reading from an essay on 'Social Grace'
Everyone singing London Pride [the name of a London Flower].  It is a song from from WW-ll, that brought tears to Barry Dey and Simon Callow.  They said: "During the war years, and even after, that song was England's other National Anthem."
Then a reading  from a story about Coward's experience in London during the war years.    [ I think I mentioned in a previous piece that at one point in the war London was bombed for 70 straight nights]
Then everyone, including the audience, sang 'I'll see you again.'
Great time ... it had everything I love about theatrical events, wit, drama, terse-laconic-synoptic-pithy & breviloquent writing.  Plus, my 2 favorites, intimate space [ca. 80 seats] and  free!

There is a lot of Coward on you tube. & There are more events to come that I hope to see.

And on the street:

 
                                                     The Spirit of Audrey by John Kennedy.
Dedicated to the memory of Audrey Hepburn, UNICEF ambassador 1987 - 1993