by Noel Coward
Redgrave agreed, and Noël decided to play the part that he had created on stage in Tonight at 8:30 himself. It occupied much of the summer but it didn't prevent him from writing a new musical. It may be a generalization, but it would seem that Noël's greatest and most enduring hits were written in a sudden burst of creative energy. He may have been pondering the idea for a period of time, but the actual writing seemed to flow. When a show had several false starts—for whatever reason—the final version was invariably flawed.
Noël always referred to his painting style as “Touch-and-Gaugin.” (Note the rubber gloves he had to wear after he developed an allergy to oil paint.)
The new musical began life as a fable set in working-class South London—This Happy Breed revisited. Then he decided to make it what he called “The Romeo and Juliet musical,” in which a sailor on a one-day leave finds the girl of his dreams. The title of Hoi Polloi is changed to Over the Garden Wall.
On May 19 he writes to Lornie from Jamaica:
I am working very hard on the score … I have constructed the book but only written a little bit of it. There's a good part for Little Lad— not the romantic lead—and I think I should like to get Pat Kirk-wood … The music and lyrics so far are jolly good and happily free from Victorian nostalgia. [His last musical had been Pacific 1860.} There are no sextettes of hideous girls in white crinolines singing, “See my pretty sampler. I've stuffed it up my arse.” Nor are there any opportunities for skittish jumpings up and down and clappings of hands and lines such as, “Mamma Mamma, we are going to a party, is it not agreeable—I have already pooped in my pantalettes with excitement.” There will be a couple of pleasantly morose vocal numbers for Sylvia Cecil. You might make discreet enquiries about her and Kirkwood.
Before long he had changed his mind—and the approach—again:
I have just finished writing an entirely new book for the Musical and it really is jolly good and quite different from anything I have ever done before … It was very complicated and difficult to construct but the actual writing of it was fairly painless and I managed to do the whole thing in a week! … It is robust, “tough” and not a bit bittersweet but I think it is pretty exciting … the plot is intricate and rather complicated.
The process involved in getting a Coward show—particularly an expensive musical—onto a West End stage in these years of his professional discontent was complex and frustrating. Three managements looked at his eventual submission. Three times he was asked to rewrite, something that would have been unthinkable in the 1920s and 1930s.
Noël would always maintain that he was unaffected by his critics, who included those who influenced his work before it was presented. It is hard to accept that conclusion. He was constantly being told that he was old-fashioned and out of touch. Very well, then, he would show them. He would write a contemporary urban musical about Soho nightclubs and gangsters and the seedy postwar world. But it was not a world he either knew or liked, and despite some charming songs, Ace of Clubs, as it was finally called, was not convincing.
•
AT THE END of the year he turned fifty, and on December 16 Violet received a cable:
FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY TEDDINGTON WAS DECKED AND FLOWERED EVEN GOD WAS HEARD TO SAY WELL DONE VIOLET AGNES COWARD
INTERMISSION
A QUADRILLE … FOR TWO
(1952-1954)
I want to do a Victorian comedy for Alfred and Lynn, if only I can get a good enough idea. We discussed it ad nauseam …
DIARIES (MAY 18, 1951)
Axel (Alfred) and Serena (Lynn) take their bow after a performance of Quadrille.
DESIGN FOR LIVING had been a huge hit. Point Valaine had been a distinct flop. Both were twenty years ago, and Noël felt he had something to prove to his old friends as well as to postwar audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.
This time the play would open in London and then—when it had acquired the fine polish that was the Lunts’ specialty—transfer to their home turf of Broadway. That was the plan.
Cecil Beaton (1904—1980) was asked to design the costumes and sets. (Noël had known Beaton since the 1920s, and for many years the relationship was a prickly one, perhaps because both men were carefully protecting their own best creations—themselves. However, the stress of the war threw them together, and a genuine mutual admiration society was born that lasted for the rest of Noël's life.)
In early 1952 Noël was able to cable the Lunts:
QUADRILLE IS FINISHED I LOVE IT VERY MUCH AND ONLY HOPE THAT YOU WILL.
Cecil wrote:
The Sherry-Netherland
Fifth Avenue at 59th Street
New York
Sunday, March 16th 1952
My Dear Noël,
I am utterly enchanted by Quadrille, It has the charm, the wit and frivolity of The Importance and is more mature and tender than anything you have ever written. I am so happy for you. It's so difficult to sustain a high average of success over the years. You have been responsible for so many of my special theatre treats: I hated having to choose my words very carefully when recently you asked me what I thought of your last couple of plays as I could not honestly feel as much enthusiasm for them as I would have liked to express. This time, however, I am completely bouleverse. This is your best play to date and I think you have created a masterpiece of its sort.
It has always been my ambition to do scenery and costumes for one of your plays, and I feel that I am very lucky to have been kept for this particular occasion … nothing on earth that I know of would prevent me from doing the job.
Saturday, 29th March
I have spent a lot of time at the costume museum getting acquainted with the period. I took Alfred and Lynn there and they were enchanted—Lynn quite unabashed taking her clothes off there and then and getting into the bustles and negligees. We have even had toiles made by Helen Pons [the costume designer] who is a genius at getting bodices cut so that even Mrs. Braddock [a famously corpulent Labour Party MP] could have a 16 inch waist. We have patterns and measurements of all the arm seams, shoulder cuts, etc.
I have begun to have a few vague ideas about scenery but am awaiting your arrival so that I can hear your plans. It is a most enchanting epoch and one that hasn't been seen on the stage of late. Alfred spent a whole day in the Public Library in a quest for railway stations but succeeded only in catching sight of a piece of grillwork. We are all inter-comming like mad—and, as you can imagine, L and A battle in turn for the telephone mouthpiece—”What sort of ribbon could I have to tie under the chin when I first come on?” asks Lynn. “Just a minute,” interrupts Alfred—”Say, what are we going to do about getting shoes of the period?” It's all a great lark—long may it remain so!
Lynn did not see the project in the light of a lark and wrote to Cecil Beaton: “It will be a lot of hard work, anxiety, worry. We will very likely fight to the death, we will hope to win through to success, but it won't be fun.”
Blue Harbour—Port Maria
3rd April
Dear Cecil,
Thank you for yours like anything. Oh dear, oh dear, what a carry-on; I am so very excited over the whole business. I am delighted with your getting on with ideas about the clothes first and I have no doubts at all that they will be absolutely divine. The most important things to remember about the decor are the two quick scene-changes in Acts One and Three. I suggest you think on the lines of Serena's sitting room being fairly small and set inside the station buffet, so that in the first act we can pop it in and in the third act we can whisk it away.
I have read the Tribune and the Times notices of The Grass Harp [Truman Capote's play, which Beaton had designed] and you have obviously done a wonderful job. I am longing to see it and I must say I am quivering with anticipation at the thought of all the excitements ahead.
I arrive home on May 5th and heigh ho for everything.
Fondest Love
NOËL
Now Noël's correspondence with the Lunts began in earne
st. Alfred writes:
150 East End Avenue, New York
April 3rd, 1952
Dear Noëly,
I've had several long talks with Cecil about the production, communicating to him, as tactfully as possible, your doubts, fears and desires—keeping the backgrounds simple and low in key, that the actors can be fully dimensional without distraction, the sets mobile for quick changes, the costs low—at a minimum, in fact—etc., etc., and he agrees and seems delighted over the whole thing—as a matter of fact, he and Lynn are at Mme. Pons now for a fitting of the patterns and pulling her waist in even tighter—she swears she can still breathe with ease.
Her studying the part continues, as she wants every word as written and I must say it isn't easy. She has someone come in to cue her. I listen from the stairs now and then and it sounds good—though I still think Hubert overbalances the men. Axel is a darling but is weak in the second act ensemble scenes—and I know that “trip across America” speech should be lengthened. I can tell you exactly where I mean the low dull spots occur—I don't want more lines but truer ones here and there. Hubert is so much easier to write and in your innocent facility I think you've pulled him out of proportion—that is, if you want that lovely, tender final scene to hold up.
Does this destroy the placidity of your Jamaican holiday? I truly hope not. It's a glorious play—I just want it perfect.
These days are hectic, packing up the house, seeing a few plays, sitting for a portrait (damned good) and trying to keep amiable.
Our love to you,
GLORIA SWANSON
•
NOëL HAD COMMITMENTS in London, so the Lunts, determined to rehearse with him present, went over for the first time since the end of the war, five months before the play was due to open.
On the road, the reactions had pleased Noël. At the first reading in May: “Lovely evening. Alfred and Lynn read the first act … so exquisitely that the tears were in my eyes. They are great actors.” In Manchester in July: “Opening night very exciting. Lovely audience … Tremendous ovation at the end—altogether satisfactory … Everyone very happy.”
“Edinburgh … was enchanting … The audience was deeply appreciative and really warm and sweet. The ovation at the end was terrific.”
The day before the London opening Cecil wrote:
8 Pelham Place
SW7
Dearest Noël,
Just a note to tell you how greatly I have enjoyed working on this enchanting play with you and to say what a happy experience for me the whole venture has been. I do trust this won't be the last of our collaborations, and that this one will be crowned with glory.
Quadrille opened at London's Phoenix Theatre on September 12—the same theater that had opened with Noël's Private Lives in 1930. The critics were kind to the Lunts, but extremely (and by now predictably) unkind to Noël.
On September 14 Cecil wrote again:
Redditch House
Broad Chalk
Salisbury
I'm afraid the critics haven't come up to my expectations—or probably they have to yours!—but I thought they would heap unstinted praise upon your head and tell you in no uncertain terms that the play possessed enchantment and tender qualities they hadn't expected. But the brutes have been quite clinical and ungenerous and proved themselves a grudging crabby lot. It will be fun to prove them quite superfluous, for I'm sure the play will run to delirious audiences for as long as you want.
In fact it ran for 329 performances.
•
EVEN ON THE ROAD Noël had begun to experience what other playwrights complained about with the Lunts in these years. He was forced to rewrite as they went along, when Alfred and Lynn determined that audience reaction was revealing “soft spots” in the play. The prewar Noël would have stood his ground, but by now constant criticism had begun to erode his confidence and, despite his over-protestation in his Diaries, he was beginning to wonder if, perhaps, his critics weren't right. Perhaps he was out of date.
It was ironic—and more than a little tragic—that at this point he should have been working with two old friends who had by now evolved their own method of shaping anyone's material to what they felt best suited their own stage personalities. Noël's frustration can be seen in the answer he gave to an interviewer who was asking him what it was like to direct the Lunts. “Direct the Lunts? When you do a play with the Lunts, nobody directs them. Oh, they have a delusion that they listen to a director, but they don't. Quadrille, it was said, was directed by Noël Coward. Noël Coward refused the honour.” In fact, the program carried the line “Directed by the author with grateful acknowledgement to Miss Fontanne and Mr. Lunt.”
Having seen the production, Edna Ferber wrote with her customary irony: “While writing this play you were, I think, somewhat touched by a remote flavour of two excellent novelists—Trollope and Ferber. Correct me if I'm wrong.” Nevertheless, she had a legitimate point. There was more than a touch of “fine writing” about it.
•
WHAT STARTED WITH the London production became aggravated when the play came to New York. The Lunts returned to the United States toward the end of 1953 determined to take a long rest before embarking upon the play in late 1954.
In May, Noël is writing to Lynn and promising that “a week or so from now I will sit down on my chubby little bottom and get after tidying up Quadrille,“
17 Gerald Road, London S.W.i.
May 24th 1954
I suggested Hugh Williams [for Hubert], because he really is a very charming actor; on the other hand John Williams [an English actor based in the United States] is also a very good actor and obviously, being in America, is more easy of access. I would be perfectly happy with him, providing you and Alfred heard him read it to you first. I have no doubts whatever about Dorothy Stickney. I saw her the other day in Kind Sir make the most God awful part seem quite plausible. She is a first rate actress and will be terribly valuable as Charlotte. I am certainly still holding my thumbs about coming to Genesee in September but this really rather depends on my darling Mum, who is failing, I'm afraid, and I don't intend to be far away from her as long as she is alive. [Violet died on June 30.]
A month later he wrote to them both:
Goldenhurst
June 26th 1954
Darling Grandma and Grandpa,
I have been sitting for a week with Quadrille, I read through the original published version and the prompt script with all the cuts. I have beaten my brains out trying to find out what is wrong with it and I am afraid, looking at it with a fresh eye, that I find nothing wrong with it at all—I mean in its final version. I do think that originally the first scene was far too long and I think all the cuts are a great improvement, although I feel that if somebody really brilliant played Hubert, some of them might conceivably be put back, but as I doubt if we shall get anybody good enough, I think it would be far better to leave it as it is.
Do let us remember one thing, and that is that you both and Binkie and Jack and Cecil Beaton and I all loved this play very much when we started it, and all the weeks it was played on tour before we got to London, we still loved it very much (apart from the appalling performance of Griffith Jones [as Hubert] and the merely adequate and frequently idiotic performance of Marian Spenser). We opened in London to a dreary first-night audience and all the critics who were determined that, however good you both were, the play was not going to be good. From that moment onwards it was fairly inevitable that we should be assailed by doubts; however, the play ran for a year in spite of the performances above mentioned.
I have tried, hard, to think of ways of improving it and, so help me God, I can't really think of anything, beyond describing the first scene and the last scene as Prologue and Epilogue. I am unimpressed by the critics’ opinion and most profoundly impressed by our opinion, which only suffered a slight sea-change after they, the critics, had torn the play to pieces. I genuinely think that in the original version I made a technical mis
take by making the first scene so long and allowing the character of Hubert to run away with me, but this has been entirely rectified by the cuts already made; as it stands and as I last saw it at Streatham, it seems to me a very charming play indeed and I really cannot start re-writing it without spoiling its essential structure, which I still think is extremely good. If, for instance, we cut out the first scene entirely, it would leave Mr. Spevin unaccounted for and completely ruin the effect of the last scene. I believe that if Hubert and Charlotte were played even reasonably well we should have nothing to worry about.
Whoever plays Hubert must have charm and humour, and whoever plays Charlotte must be American and not an adequate English actress trying to be American. Another point I found on going over the play very carefully was that Octavia must not be played by a youngish character actress pretending to be old but by a really elderly woman who has experience and authority and can carry the scene without you two having to carry it for her. I would love to see Hubert played by an actor with style and charm—my suggestions are Alan Webb, Bobby Fleming [Flemyng], possibly Basil Rath-bone, who at least would know enough to get value out of the lines, which is more than Griffith Jones ever did.
Please, please do not think that I am seeking for alibis and putting all the blame on the actors—the casting of Griffith Jones was largely my fault, though I had no idea he would be as bad as he ultimately turned out to be. Marian Spenser is a competent actress but I think her determination to be American, plus the impact of dear Griff's laborious lack of comedy, threw the poor bitch for six.
I have racked my brains to try and think of ways of improving the play and it is no use. My original conception remains clear in my mind and I can't budge it. I know, with complete conviction, that if I started re-writing and re-constructing and frigging about with it, it would become a shambles and anyway I know that my creative talent won't work unless I really believe in what I am doing. I do, as I've said before, love the play very much and I have a feeling that you do, too—our mutual theatrical experience has whittled it down to its present shape and I truly don't think we can improve upon it except by seeing that it is well cast and well played.