Present Laughter - Fun

Coward's Present Laughter

Catherine, Eric and I had our fix of fun with the Broadway.com production of Noel Coward’s Present Laughter tonight. The show will be broadcast on Friday on PBS as well. Kelvin Kline may be instrumental in bringing back the man’s silk housecoat. Or if not silk, at least something utterly upscale. I think my favourite joke of the night was when Gary Essendine (Kevin Kline) got a new present and it was a dressing gown, the joy on his face made me laugh so hard. I think this may be the largest number of dressing gowns I have ever seen on a man in a show, even though the number might only be three.

I was prepared for the ending of the show, since the trope of having the protagonists “tiptoe out together” is also used in his Blithe Spirit and Private Lives.

I tried to see Private Lives in London and it was sold out. Catherine remarked that she and Eric might have been the youngest couple in the show tonight and there were many older people there, chuckling as I was.

I wonder if the model for plays like these is no longer popular. None of the kids could come along with us. Eric remarked that he was sure they would have been in tune with the humour.

 Present Laughter. 
Photograph: Joan Marcus/2016 Joan Marcus

The show has four parts and there is probably an intermission, but on filmed events like this, the scenes are only marked with words like “the next morning” or “three days later”. There was no scene change. The apartment was much the same, except when decorated minimally for a Bon Voyage Party. So that made the show pretty interesting, having so little scene change and so much invested in the dialogue.

On the way home Catherine googled Kevin Kline to see how old he is. Seventy. That made his lines in the show even funnier, when he kept say he was 43 or thereabout. And those absoulutely great moments when he would check his appearance in the mirror and then give a pat to his hair. Just a great show: the humour around the handshakes from Roland Maul; the amazing work on the piano of Kevin Kline. That surprised me.

Kevin Kline also did a lot of his own musical work when he appeared in the biopic of Cole Porter.  But that would be another story.

Well, a wonderful evening. If you get a chance to tape the PBS repeat tomorrow, do so, for some wonderful laughs.