Peter Viney's Blog

Present Laughter
by Noel Coward

Directed by Matthew Warchus
Set & Costume- Rod Howell

Old Vic Theatre, London

Friday 12th July 2019, 19.30

CAST:

Andrew Scott- Garry Essendine, actor and musical star
Indira Varma – Liz Essendine, his separated wife
Sophie Thompson – Monica Reed, Garry’s secretary
Joshua Hill – Fred, Garry’s valet
Suzie Toase – Helen Lyppiat, his producer (normally Henry, male)
Enzo Cilenti- Joe Lyppiat, his producer’s husband (normally, Joanna, female)
Luke Thallon – Roland Maule, aspiring playwright
Kitty Archer- Daphne Stillington, a ‘pretty 23 year old’
Liza Sadovy- Miss Erikson, Garry’s housekeeper / Lasy Saltburn, Daphne’s aunt
Abdul Salis – Morris Dixon, Garry’s manager

Andrew Scott as Garry Essendine

This is the third major Present Laughter production in recent years. It’s a gem of a leading role.

Present Laughter focusses on  the character of Garry Essendine, a famous musical comedy actor and personality. It takes place in his apartment in the days leading up to his departure for a tour of Africa (the most sinister continent, he calls it) to cash in on his own slightly fading name and fame. He is forty. Garry has an entourage which he depends upon – secretary, valet, producer, manager, ex-wife.

Kitty Archer as Daphne, Andrew Scott as Garry Essendine

Garry is sexually incontinent. We open with Daphne, last night’s seduction waking up and looking for him. Later, the scene is repeated with his producer’s partner. Garry is constantly harassed, a prisoner of his own fame. Daphne wants to audition for him. A young playwright is stalking him. All sorts of shenanigans are taking place within his support team. Garry is supposed to be like Noel Coward who wrote and played the part which sends up the public perception of him.

Andrew Scott as Garry, Indira Varma as ex-wife Liz

It follows that it works best when the actor playing the lead carries over some of his own charisma from real life into the role, so easily the best I had seen it done was by Rik Mayall. Since Sherlock and Fleabag (I won’t even count Hamlet – we’re talking supermarket recognizability), Andrew Scott is sufficiently famous to turn heads in any Tesco too, and it helps. After Fleabag, he’s also hot right now.  Then it’s directed by Matthew Warchus – I looked back on my reviews of his productions, all five star too.

Andrew Scott is on a roll. No trace of Irish accent here either. He played Garry large and theatrical, with flamboyant gestures,  which is as it should be. And he borrowed, or channeled his own ‘star’ status to bring it all out so wonderfully. Dazzling is the word.

Garry with his secretary / PA, Monica (Sophie Thomson)

The discussion is over the fashionable switch of a major character from female to male – Joanna, the wife of his producer, Henry, has become “Joe” and Henry has become “Helen.” In the original, Joanna is described by Garry as a ‘stereotyped diamond-studded siren.’

On the whole, critics liked the switch. Natasha Tripney in The Stage felt that Joanna was normally played as a dangerous woman and an object of comedy, and liked Joe and approved of ‘genuine erotic tension between them.’  Really? Garry makes it abundantly clear that he loathes Joanna in the text, and considers her / him a disruptive influence. When the attempted seduction begins, Garry is not the one to look any kind of erotic gift horse in the mouth, and so goes along, but I don’t think he is supposed to be deeply moved.

Andrew Scott as Garry, Enzo Cilenti as “Joe”

Note that when Joe / Joanna slaps Garry’s face and stalks off at the end of the play, Garry pauses for a moment, and goes straight back into discussing the new theatre his producers have bought. Garry was emotionally untouched.

There are plenty of hints in the script that Garry is bisexual, such as the letters read out by Monica, his secretary. There’s the man with an invention that Garry fears might be “disgusting”, and there’s the young actor. Garry had convinced him that he had minded so passionately about his career.  There’s someone called Pickett from Brazil, and the actor playing Garry can react to point them, or glide over them. When Rik Mayall did the role, he pointed them all,  just the word Brazil becomes salacious. Later, there’s a letter from ‘Joe from Madras’ who Garry had met in a bar in Marseilles -who informs him that his sister’s pregnant. Garry should look guilty at mention of Joe AND then of the sister. Garry swore to get an Admiral’s son a job on stage:

MONICA: Apparently you met his son at a dance in Edinburgh when you were up there with ‘Laughter in Heaven’ and swore that if he ever left the Navy you’d give him a job on stage.
GARRY:  I never said any such thing.
MONICA (grimly): He has left the Navy.
GARRY: Well, give him letters of introduction, don’t just sit there.
MONICA: I don’t know anything about him, what does he look like?
GARRY: Absolutely marvellous, if it’s the one I think it is … vast, strapping shoulders and tiny, tiny hips like a wasp …

I have seen that played straight as a frank appraisal of physique by an actor-manager used to discussing casting, but normally that is played with at least enthusiasm or even a wistful smile. Hello, sailor, indeed.

Mayall’s Garry also made it clear that when he meets Roland, the aspiring playwright / groupie / fan, he can’t remember how they met – basically, had they ever slept together or had he just signed an autograph? Roland, the stalking obsessive is usually seen as gay in his adoration of Garry.

Garry’s promiscuous life is so full of such incidents, male or female, that they’re blurring to him.  It works well with the lines and was probably sufficient in itself. Then there were raised eyebrows at the Boy Scouts mention. The innuendo is throughout the text. But here, by making Joanna into Joe, they hit the theme with a sledgehammer rather than Coward’s feather. Enzo Cilenti’s accent didn’t help. A lot of Garry’s best lines were cut too.  As Joe was in standard evening dress, Garry couldn’t compliment him on having dressed up especially with a new dress, hair done today and nail polish as in the text. The whole seduction scene once turned around was heavy and ponderous where it should be light and sexy. Cilenti’s accent did not work with Coward’s lines, altering the rhythm and timing. The whole seduction scene fell dead flat. If Coward had lived to see an era when it was possible to play it that way on stage, he might well have gone with it, but crucially he would have written it completely differently. He would not have adapted the older text.   I thought Joe miscast, and the gender switch both unnecessary, and overdone.

The morning after: Enzo Cilenti as “Joe”

If I had wanted a gay switch, I would have switched the young ingenue, Daphne, not Joanna. I reckon it would fit the lines better. On second thoughts, that might clash with Roland’s role, so you would just get Roland twice. So, yes, Noel Coward got it right in the first place.

One of the main losses was in the tension in the all-female scene between Monica, Liz and Joanna. It’s a sublime Coward scene, but doesn’t work with Joe replacing Joanna.

Luke Thallon as Roland Maule

The two youngsters, Daphne (Kitty Archer) and Roland Maule (Luke Thallon) both came over extremely well. Daphne’s OTT audition scene was outstanding, the best I’ve seen it done. Garry was delightfully fazed by seeing someone else over-acting as much as he does. Roland was frantic and hyper and reminded us both of Rick Mayall – in general, rather than just as Garry Essendine.

Daphne and Roland are outside Garry’s team of ex-wife, manager, producer and secretary. The team depends on Garry for a living, and the various sexual machinations in the story threaten the team’s stability. A key speech from the original:

GARRY: Here we are, five people closely woven together by affection, and work and intimate knowledge of each other. It’s too important a set up to risk breaking for any outside emotional reason whatsoever. Joanna is alien to us. She doesn’t really belong to us and never could … But don’t you believe for one moment that Joanna isn’t a potential danger, because she is ! …. She’s a hundred per cent female, exceedingly attractive and ruthlessly implacable in the pursuit of anything she wants.

I can’t recall how they changed that speech, if they did. But it doesn’t work with Joe as played.

Maybe it was that Andrew Scott was so charismatic, but apart from Indira Varma as his ex-wife, Liz, they all seemed diminished compared to other productions we’ve seen. I compare reluctantly, but we have seen Phyllis Logan as Monica, and Lucy Briggs-Owen as Joanna. Both were powerful performances.  It is supposed to be a star-centered  play, but for me it works better with stronger performances surrounding the central role. They were Ok, but I wasn’t impressed by any of them.

L toR: Roland Maule, Liz, Garry, Morris (seated), Helen, Liz

I’ve never thought of Lady Saltburn as an invalid in a wheel chair with a saline drip, but it was good physical comedy. Liza Sandoval doubled with the Swedish housekeeper, Miss Ericsson, but I didn’t realize until I read the programme afterwards.

The programme cover emphasizes the 1939 original title, Sweet Sorrow. They go for a low-key bittersweet ending with Liz and Garry, and they both carry it off with sympathetic performances. This Garry is also a victim of his own fame.

With  Peter Gynt (David Hare’s re-imagining of Peer Gynt)  running at the National Theatre, 10 minutes walk away, at the same time, which we had booked for the next day, Garry’s horror of Peer Gynt has extra humour. Roland’s awful play is, as Monica says, ‘half in verse.’  At which Garry can shudder. The play has a few more  theatrical asides:

GARRY: I will not play a light French comedy to an auditorium that looks like a Gothic edition of Wembley Stadium.

I feel the same way about much of the West End. He comments that with doors opening and shutting, it’s like a French farce, which at that point, indeed it is.

L to R: Joe, Daphne, Fred the valet (standing), Garry, Lady Saltburn, Mr Maule, Liz, Monica

The set was stylish and stylized, and a strong statement. Early on, they missed the phone ringing sound effects when people picked up the phone which looked odd, though maybe it was sound issues at extreme side positions further back under the balcony  at the Old Vic, something we’ve noticed before. Later they were perfectly clear though, so I thought a fader had been left down.

The critics are largely united on 5 star, though Michael Billington had doubts on the gender switch, and Quentin Letts thought it ‘patchy’ as did we. Andrew Scott’s central performance is obviously 5 star at least, as is the set, and Liz, Daphne and Roland are all  in that category,  Scott is so good, that I’ll give it four overall, though the seduction scene was misguided veering on dull, and the support roles have usually been done more forcefully.

****

THE PROGRAMME

Dull cover! There’s a Noel Coward timeline, which is generic and recyclable and an essay by Russell Brand on “fame” from his own experience (he may mean notoriety) which he calls a ‘trauma, a toxic elixir’ which fits Garry’s dilemma well.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID:

5 star
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph *****

We knew – didn’t we – that Andrew Scott was very good indeed… But something remarkable has now happened at the Old Vic that will surely make even his expanding congregation of worshippers sit bolt upright in extra excitement – a revelatory performance that turns a good year into an annus mirabilis.’

Henry Hitchins, Standard *****

‘But this is Andrew Scott’s show, and he gives a virtuoso performance. It’s a fascinatingly detailed interpretation of a character who’s flirtatious, stroppy and acerbic yet also drowning in melancholy. Scott achieves something genuinely audacious in making him both odious and adorable.’

Ann Treneman, The Times, *****

The word “heyday” could have been invented by Noël Coward and that is the word that sprang to mind as I watched Andrew Scott here. He does not so much play the part of the vainglorious actor Garry Essendine as grasp it around the waist and do a hot-to-trot tango with it. His panache fills the entire theatre. The part feels made for him and he knows it.’

Daisy Bowie-Sell, What’s On Stage *****
Matt Wolf, The I, *****
Julian Eaves, British Theatre com *****
Alice Saville, Time Out *****

‘Scott plays Gary Essedine, a spoilt, petulant actor who gluts himself on the sex and intimacy his fans offer, then sits soggily in the mess he’s created. And he’s frighteningly good at it.’

Will Longman, London Theatre *****

4 star
Michael Billington, The Guardian ****
Quentin Letts, Sunday Times ****
Paul Taylor, The Independent, ****
Natasha Tripney, The Stage ****

LINKS ON THIS BLOG:

PLAYS BY NÖEL COWARD

• Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2010 (Alison Steadman)
• Blithe Spirit, by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2019 (Jennifer Saunders)
• Blithe Spirit FILM 2021 (Judi Dench)
• Fallen Angels, by Noël Coward, Salisbury Playhouse
• Hay Fever by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal
• Relative Values by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal
• This Happy Breed by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal
• Present Laughter, by  Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal, 2003 Rik Mayall (retrospective)
• Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2106, Samuel West
• Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Chichester 2018, Rufus Hound
• Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Old Vic 2019, Andrew Scott
• Private Lives by Noël Coward, Nigel Havers Theatre Company, 2021, Chichester
• Private Lives, by Noël Coward, Donmar Warehouse, London 2023
• Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter, by Emma Rice, Salisbury Playhouse, 2023
• The Vortex, by Noël Coward, Chichester Festival Theatre 2023

MATTHEW WARCHUS, DIRECTOR
The Caretaker, Old Vic, 2016
Future Conditional, Old Vic, 2015
La Bête, Comedy Theatre 2010

ANDREW SCOTT
Hamlet, Almeida & broadcast 2017

INDIRA VARMA
Man & Superman, National Theatre 2014
Titus Andronicus, Globe 2014
The Hot House, Trafalgar Studio, 2013
Hysteria, Bath 2012
Exodus: Gods & Kings (FILM)

SOPHIE THOMPSON
Importance of Being Earnest, Classic Spring 2018

SUZIE TOASE
One Man, Two Guv’nors, 2012

ENZO CILENTI
High Rise (FILM)

LUKE THALLON
Albion, Almeida, 2017

KITTY ARCHER
Othello, ETT 2018

LIZA SADOVY
Absolute Hell, National, 2018
Pygmalion, Headlong 2016