Having seen two productions of Noel Coward’s Private Lives in the past six months—both with Elaine Stritch as a marvelous Amanda—my reaction to a Coward play is continuing delight at the bitchily human quality exuded, and surprise at the way his comedy meets that most severe test of humorous plays, repetition of viewing. It is a test that few younger playwrights could meet today. The prospect of viewing as often Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park or Jean Kerr’s Mary, Mary is enough to give a theatergoer a case of what my old maid aunt always referred to as “the thumps.” All this is to suggest that inherent in Coward’s work is a perceptive comic sense of the foibles of the human condition that transcends both the topical and the intellectual.
I’m not sure I recall exactly when I first became aware of the actual existence of Noel Coward, but it was, I feel, an important date. I vaguely recall his appearances in films I saw as a boy. Later, there was a youthful friend of mine who incessantly played Coward’s recordings of his own songs, most memorably “Mad Dogs
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