Posts Tagged ‘Noël Coward’
DESIGN FOR LIVING
Sunday, July 7th, 2024An Americanized trio of romantic protagonists and a gay subtext made explicit are two reasons Odyssey Theatre Ensemble’s provocative but problematic staging of Noël Coward’s Design For Living is a far cry from the one Broadway audiences first discovered back in 1933.
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HAY FEVER
Tuesday, June 18th, 2024
A weekend in the country has rarely proven as delightfully, deliciously madcap as the one L.A. theatergoers can now spend with the ever so eccentric Bliss family in South Pasadena Theatre Workshop’s ever so effervescent revival of Noël Coward’s 1924 comedic gem Hay Fever.
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ARRIVAL & DEPARTURE
Monday, July 16th, 2018A deaf New York film professor and a hearing-impaired bookkeeper fall head over heels into adulterous love in Arrival & Departure, playwright Stephen Sachs’ 21st-century updating of Noel Coward’s über-romantic cinematic classic Brief Encounter, a compelling, excitingly staged, terrifically acted Fountain Theatre World Premiere whose script could still use some work.
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THE VORTEX
Sunday, April 13th, 2014RECOMMENDED
A pair of sensational lead performances and a fabulous 1960s design are the best reasons to catch this rare revival of Noël Coward’s 1924 hit The Vortex despite a half-hour or so of cuts which make the latest Malibu Playhouse production a less-than-unqualified success.
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A SONG AT TWILIGHT
Thursday, March 27th, 2014Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
21st Century society may have progressed considerably since the mid-1960s when Noël Coward wrote and starred in A Song At Twilight, but a cursory glance at today’s Hollywood makes it clear that even a half-century-old play can express contemporary truths, particularly when revived as splendidly as is the case this month and next at the Pasadena Playhouse.
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NOËL COWARD’S BRIEF ENCOUNTER
Sunday, February 23rd, 2014
Married housewife Laura meets married physician Alec when a cinder gets in her eye at a London train station and he kindly removes it for her. Shared tea and conversation in the station tea room lead to another meeting, and another, until Laura and Alec can no longer deny their love, nor the knowledge that as an adulterous middle-class couple living in 1938 London, there is no possibility of a happily-ever-after.
Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter now comes to magical, imaginative, supremely theatrical onstage life as the Wallis Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts presents the Cornwall-to-London-to-Broadway-to-Beverly Hills production of Kneehigh Theatre’s Tony-nominated adaptation of David Lean’s über-romantic 1945 film classic, itself based on Coward’s one-act gem Still Life.
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