Plays

Plays Synopsis

The third volume of Coward's plays contains some of his best work fromthe thirties.

Design for Living- is about a triangular alliancebetween two men and a woman, based on friends of Coward's, which hewaited to write "until she and he and I had arrived by different roadsin our careers at a time and a place when we felt we could all threeplay together with a more or less equal degree of success." Cavalcadewas Coward's most ambitious stage project, set during the Boer War,which cost £30,000 in its day and which includes scenes of the reliefof the sinking of the Titanic and the coming of the Jazz Age. Conversation Piece is a musical comedy that Noël wrote for the Parisianstar Yvonne Printemps and includes the song "I'll Follow My SecretHeart".

Also in the volume are three short plays including Tonight at 8.30 -Hands Across the Sea, a gentle satire of colonials and London Society;Still Life which became the film Brief Encounterand Fumed Oaka suburbancomedy about a 'worm who turns'. The volume is introduced by SheridanMorley.