Noël Coward: Renaissance man about town

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This article was published 28/01/2015 (3368 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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On the occasion of Noël Coward’s 70th birthday in 1969, Lord Louis Mountbatten toasted the friend he called the Master.

“There are probably greater painters than Noël, greater novelists than Noël, greater librettists, greater composers of music, greater singers, greater dancers, greater comedians, greater tragedians, greater stage producers, greater film directors, greater cabaret artists, greater TV stars. If there are, they are 14 different people. Only one man combined all 14 different labels: the Master.”

Of the first 14 honorees of Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Master Playwright Festival, none was such a phenomenon as Noël Peirce Coward (1899-1973), a British landmark as recognizable as London’s Big Ben. He was the personification of urbane sophistication, with the sleek hair, the silk dressing gown, cigarette holder in hand and always the perfect quip on his lips.

While that cool image of debonair idleness made it look as if he never worked a day in his life, his writing output was prodigious: 60 produced plays, including his most popular, Private Lives, Hay Fever, Blithe Spirit and Fallen Angels, in which he generally also played the leading man. Then were his 300 published songs, not to mention screenplays, short stories, a novel, three-volume autobiography and diaries.

He knew everyone who was anyone, and most of them were in high places. Among his BFFs were Charlie Chaplin and Winston Churchill, Marlene Dietrich and Ian Fleming, Lord Mountbatten and the Queen Mother. He won a 1943 Academy Award for his flag-waving film In Which We Serve and a 1971 Tony Award for distinguished achievement in theatre. His least-known role was as spy for Winnipeg-born William Stephenson (a.k.a. Intrepid), a performance that earned him inclusion on the Nazi liquidation list.

It’s easy to forget how many chapters there were to Coward’s eventful public life. CowardFest 2015, which runs until Feb. 15 in venues all over the city, will focus, of course, on the plays but also touch on his iconic songs and movies.

“He’s a worthy master playwright, but not an obvious one in the way of some of the others, like Brecht and Pinter,” says University of Manitoba theatre professor Margaret Groome, who gave a Coward lecture Wednesday night at the King’s Head Pub to kick off the festival. “The sheer range of his work is astonishing.”

There were times in the 1950s when his Mayfair drawing-room comedies of bad manners fell out of favour, rejected as trivial fluff. Under the glittering surface of those plays, a lot more is going on, says Groome, who is directing the Black Hole Theatre production Hay Fever.

The American critic John Lahr said, “Only when Coward is frivolous does he become in any sense profound. And it is the frivolity in his plays that have proved timeless. Frivolity acknowledges the futility of life while adding flavour to it.”

That image as glamorous boulevardier was a masterful creation, a mask he wore to hide his lower-class roots and homosexuality from the public.

“He worked very hard at creating this persona and then lived it to the hilt,” Groome says.

She sees Coward as a worthy precursor of Beckett and Pinter. The absurdism found in Hay Fever was built upon by Beckett, while Coward was very adept in his use of pauses, which Pinter would later make his trademark.

“It’s become more acknowledged that this is a playwright to be taken seriously,” Groome says. “You can laugh at his plays but also take them seriously.”

Coward also had an impact on the big screen after debuting in the D. W. Griffith 1917 film Hearts of the World. He memorably appeared in movies such as Bunny Lake Is Missing and Boom, while the adaptation of his play Cavalcade won the1932 Oscar for best picture. Then there was his most enduring 1945 film, Brief Encounter.

“I think a couple of his films for me are more impressive than the bulk of his theatrical work,” says George Toles, the U of M chair of film studies who will introduce Brief Encounter Feb. 4 at a free screening at 320-70 Albert St. “I think Brief Encounter, familiar as it is, and often parodied, is a masterpiece. It has often been called the quintessential British film and I don’t think that is an overstatement.”

The plays and movies generated much of Coward’s global appeal but it was the music that stood at the centre of Coward’s art. He could only play piano in three keys, but when he sat down to entertain, he was the life of the party. His sheer variety will be on display when jazz singer Helen White performs Noël Coward: A Revue of his Finest Songs in the Palm Room of the Fort Garry Hotel Feb. 6 and 7 at 8:30 p.m.

The playlist includes the jazz standard Twentieth Century Blues, the wistful Zigeuner, the delightful Mrs. Worthington and perhaps his best known song, the tongue-twisting Mad Dogs and Englishmen. The English-born White grew up listening to those tunes favoured by her parents but was no fan.

“I thought they were terrible, toffee-nosed nonsense,” says White, who resides in Poplar Point. “He’s an acquired taste.”

But the singer acquired that taste and has always included Coward in her performances around town. Putting together the playlist for her revue required extra care, as the material is not easy to sing, given the songs’ staccato rhymes — and many are decidedly politically incorrect today.

“He goes to deepest, darkest Africa and tells people how to live their lives,” says White, who is also performing with her pianist, Jonathan Alexiuk, in Blithe Spirit at Ralph Connor House to Feb. 13. “Nowadays it would be seen as racist, sexist and every -ist you can imagine.”

More of Coward’s music will be sung by the master himself, as portrayed by Stratford Festival actor Ben Carlson in Mad Dogs and Englishman at RMTC Warehouse Feb. 7.

In 1973, Coward died of heart failure in Jamaica, where he had settled as Britain’s first celebrity tax exile. He was curious about what people would think of him after his death and, in a 1955 diary entry, predicted the response.

“The only thing that really saddens me over my demise is that I shall not be here to read the nonsense that will be written about me and my works and my motives. There will be books proving conclusively that I was homosexual and books proving conclusively that I was not. There will be detailed and inaccurate analyses of my motives for writing this or that and of my character. What a pity I shan’t be here to enjoy them.”

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca