Publisher's Synopsis
The book Noel Coward wanted, promised, threatened to write--and never did . . . His essays, interviews, diary entries, lyrics, verse, his views on his fellow playwrights: "My Colleague Will," Shaw, Wilde, Chekhov, Barrie, Maugham, Eliot, Osborne, Albee, Beckett, Miller, Williams, Rattigan, Pinter, and Shaffer . . . On the critics--many of whom irritated him over the years but came to admire him: James Agate, Alexander Woollcott, Graham Greene, Kenneth Tynan among them . . . The producers who crossed his path: Andre Charlot, C.B. Cochran, Binkie Beaumont . . . And the actors in the Coward Galaxy: John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Gertrude Lawrence, the Lunts, etc . . . His views on the Art of Acting: auditions, rehearsals, learning the lines, clarity of delivery, timing, control, range, stage fright, fans, theatre audiences, revivals, comedy, "the Method," plays with a "message," taste, construction, "Star Quality," etc. . . . His experience in, and thoughts on: Revue, Cabaret, television, and musical theatre, Conversation Piece, Pacific 1860, After the Ball, Ace of Clubs, Sail Away, The Girl Who Came to Supper, Words and Music, This Year of Grace, London Calling . . . and much more. Ingeniously, deftly compiled, edited, and annotated by Barry Day, Coward authority, and editor of The Noel Coward Reader and The Letters of Noel Coward.
