Tonight at 8.30: Ten one-act plays

302 Pages·2009·1.15 MB·English

by  Coward

TONIGHT AT 8.30
Ten one-act plays
we were dancing, the astonished heart,
‘red peppers’, hands across the sea, fumed oak,
shadow play, ways and means, still life, family
album, star chamber
Coward wrote this collection of ten short plays in 1935 with the plan
thathe wouldstarinthemalongsidehisbelovedGertrudeLawrence.
Intended to showcase Coward and Lawrence’s multiple talents, the
playsvaryintoneandprovideactorswithamixofacting,singingand
dancing.Runningtheplaysintriosonsuccessivenights,whatresulted
was a sparkling, fast-paced and remarkably varied selection of
theatrical gems, well-received by their audiences and still enjoyed
today. Gertrude Lawrence wrote to Coward in 1947, ‘Dearest Noe¨l,
wherever I go ... all I hear is “Please revive Tonight at 8.30!”.’
‘Tonightat8.30surprisesasmuchasitdelightsas,insomeoftheplays,
Coward takes us to a world far removed from that of the wealth and
glamour of the debonair London socialites who dominated much of
his earlier work. But The Master’s polish and sparkle are never far
awayasmusicandsongintertwine withthe witandinsightofoneof
our greatest ever playwrights.’ Chichester Festival Theatre, 2006
Noe¨lCowardwasbornin1899inTeddington,Middlesex.Hemadehis
name as a playwright with The Vortex (1924), in which he also
appeared. His numerous other successful plays included Fallen Angels
(1925), Hay Fever (1925), Private Lives (1933), Design for Living (1933), and
Blithe Spirit (1941). During the war he wrote screenplays such as Brief
Encounter (1944) and This Happy Breed (1942). In the fifties he began a
new career as a cabaret entertainer. He published volumes of verse
and a novel (Pomp and Circumstance, 1960), two volumes of autobio-
graphy and four volumes of short stories: To Step Aside (1939), Star
Quality (1951), Pretty Polly Barlow (1964) and Bon Voyage (1967). He was
knighted in 1970 and died three years later in Jamaica.
Also by Noe¨l Coward
Coward
Collected Plays: One
(Hay Fever, The Vortex, Fallen Angels, Easy Virtue)
Collected Plays: Two
(Private Lives, Bitter-Sweet, The Marquise, Post-Mortem)
Collected Plays: Three
(Design for Living, Cavalcade, Conversation Piece,
and Hands Across the Sea, Still Life, Fumed Oak
from To-night at 8.30)
Collected Plays: Four
(Blithe Spirit, Present Laughter, This Happy Breed,
and Ways and Means, The Astonished Heart, ‘Red Peppers’
from To-night at 8.30)
Collected Plays: Five
(Relative Values, Look After Lulu!,
Waiting in the Wings, Suite in Three Keys)
Collected Plays: Six
(Semi-Monde, Point Valaine, South Sea Bubble,
Nude With Violin)
Collected Plays: Seven
(Quadrille, ‘Peace in Our Time’,
and We Were Dancing, Shadow Play, Family Album, Star Chamber
from Tonight at 8.30)
Collected Plays: Eight
(I’ll Leave It To You, The Young Idea, This Was a Man)
Collected Revue Sketches and Parodies
The Complete Lyrics of Noe¨l Coward
Collected Short Stories
The Letters of Noe¨l Coward
Pomp and Circumstance
A Novel
Present Indicative
Future Indefinite
Noe¨l Coward
8.30
TONIGHT AT
Ten one-act plays
We Were Dancing
The Astonished Heart
‘Red Peppers’
Hands Across the Sea
Fumed Oak
Shadow Play
Ways and Means
Still Life
Family Album
Star Chamber
Introduced by Barry Day
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway
London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10018
UK USA
www.bloomsbury.com
Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Tonight at 8.30fi rst published in 1936 by Heinemann and republished in 1958 in Play Parade Vol. 4
Subsequently published by Eyre Methuen in 1979 in Collected Plays: Three and
Four, and by Methuen Publishing in 1999 in Collected Plays: Seven
This edition fi rst published in 2009 by Methuen Drama
© The Estate of Noel Coward (www.noelcoward.com)
Introduction © 2009 by Barry Day
Preface © The Estate of Noel Coward
Noel Coward has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as author of this work.
Cover photo: Fiona Byrne and Patrick Galligan in Brief Encounters. Photo by Shin Sugino
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as
a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be
made before rehearsals to Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, email: [email protected].
No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained.
No rights in incidental music or songs contained in the work are hereby granted and performance rights for any
performance/presentation whatsoever must be obtained from the respective copyright owners.
Visit www.bloomsbury.com to fi nd out more about our authors and their books
You will fi nd extracts, author interviews, author events and you can sign up for
newsletters to be the fi rst to hear about our latest releases and special offers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: PB: 978-1-4081-1345-5
EPDF: 978-1-4725-0351-0
EPUB: 978-1-4725-0350-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
contents
Introduction vii
Preface xviii
we were dancing 1
the astonished heart 23
‘red peppers’ 59
hands across the sea 81
fumed oak 103
shadow play 127
ways and means 155
still life 185
family album 223
star chamber 243
This page intentionally left blank
introduction
After a nine-week tour, in Manchester (two weeks), Leeds,
Glasgow (two weeks), Edinburgh, Liverpool, Newcastle and
Birmingham,Tonightat8.30openedatLondon’sPhoenixTheatre
on 9 January 1936 and closed on 20 June after 157 performances.
The US company openedat the NationalTheatre,New York,on
24 November that same year, after a try-out in Boston, and
played for 118 performances. Both engagements could have been
extended indefinitely, had it not been for Noe¨l’s personal
antipathy to long runs.There were always new playsclamouring
to be written, new words and music waiting to be heard ...
In 1935 Noe¨l took on a significant creative challenge – to revive
the form of the one-act play. In the fledgling phase of his career
he had tried his hand at it. In 1917 – under the rather clumsy
pseudonym of ‘Esnomel’ – he had collaborated with his young
friendandwould-beplaywright,Esme´ Wynne,onIdaCollaborates
and Woman and Whiskey. The more mature twenty-one year-old
Noe¨l wrote The Better Half in 1921, the unproduced Mild Oats in
1922andWeatherwisein1923.Andthatappearedtobeit.Theone-
act format seemed to have seen its best days and, besides, in the
Coward brain a host of full-length and, he hoped, more
commercial plays were clamouring to be released.
His reason for deciding to write nine – in the end, ten – of
them and play them in trios on successive evenings was not the
simple desire to show that he could master anything he cared to
turn his hand to but – as he says in his own introduction – his
belief in the ‘star system’. The public – in the West End and on
Broadway – had enjoyed watching him and Gertrude Lawrence
playtogetherinPrivateLivesbackin1930.Presumablytheywould
enjoy seeing them team up again in not one but many
incarnations?
vii
introduction
Gertie always had a singular fascination for him. In the mid-
1930s – just before Tonight at 8.30 – he mused on her complexity
as a person and an actress ...
I see her now, ages away from her ringlets and black velvet
cap, sometimes a simple wide-eyed child, sometimes a
glamorous femme de monde, at some moments a rather
boisterous ‘good sort’, at others a weary, disillusioned woman
batteredby life but gallant to the last.There were many other
grades also between these extremes. She appropriated beauty
toherselfquiteearly,alongwithallthetricksandmannerisms
that go with it. In adolescence she was barely pretty. Now,
without apparent effort, she gives the impression of sheer
loveliness. Her grace in movement is exquisite, and her voice
charming.TodisentangleGertieherselffromthismutabilityis
baffling,ratherlikedelvingforyourgrandmother’sgoldlocket
at the bottom of an over-flowing jewel-case.
As he wrote them, he sent them to his old friends, Alfred Lunt
and Lynn Fontanne, his co-stars in the 1933 Design For Living. On
15 September Lynn is writing to him about the first batch:
I have read them all and am very excited. They are quite
extraordinary ...
Oh,howIwishwecouldseesomeoftherehearsals.But,of
course,you willdo it heresometimeandthenweshallseeit.
Love, love, love and good luck, my little sweet.
Then, when she’d read all nine plays, she realised the scope of
what he was attempting.
I have ahunch that changing bills like thatanddoingsomany
different things does not do the thing you had expected of it,
i.e., that giving so much variety would lighten the work. I
have a feeling that the job of work in the theatre of three
hours hard every night is only intensified by the fact that the
plays are each different and so involving further tension. And,
of course, extra rehearsals, which means you are never out of
the theatre. An awful lot of work to bite off in one season,
Duckie! But perhaps the entertainment part will come when
viii
introduction
you have them allandcan toss them off in anotherseason...
such as the New York one. Or am I wrong?
Alec Woollcott wrote ...
I am enchanted with all I hear about your one-act plays ...
SybilColefaxwrotemeagreatdealaboutthemand,whereasI
could read only a few words of her comment,they seemedto
indicate that she had been favourably impressed.
When the first bill opened in Manchester in October of that year
‘to bigger business than has ever been known’, Noe¨l replied ...
Darling, beastly Acky-wee,
Your horrid little note arrived just as I was about to ravish
my Manchester public but now that they are safely ravished, I
can write ... You will be bleakly interested to hear that the
short play idea is so far a triumphant success. We are now
playingtwobillsofthreeplayseachandbythetimewegetto
London three bills of three plays each.
Theyareallbrilliantlywritten,exquisitelydirected,andIam
bewitching in all of them.
Yours in Christ,
Noe¨l
The first play, We Were Dancing, is generally considered the
weakest.Setatadinner-danceinSamolo–Noe¨l’smythicalSouth
Sea island which was to be revisited several times in subsequent
plays and his only published novel, Pomp and Circumstance – it
tells of two married people who fall in love while dancing.
Unfortunately, they are not marriedto one another.They decide
to run away together but then the madness of the moment
passes.
Noe¨l described it as ‘a light episode, little more than a curtain-
raiser. It was never intended to be anything more than this and,
unlike its author, it fulfilled its promise admirably.’
Not everyone agreed. Lynn put her finger on what was
wrong...
Aside from some very funny lines, which you can always
ix