Two plays from Noel Cowards famous collection of short plays – Ways and Means and Still Life, both which were filmed. Madeline Carroll and Jerome Cowan are strong in the leads - John Chapman irritated me in his intro talking about Carroll going "gee whiz we were impressed by her 1948 debut in Goodbye My Fancy but we didn't realise she had a strong history of theatre". How about the New York drama critics having done some research before they saw a play?
Ways and Means is a seemingly light comedy but with dark undertones about a bickering couple on the Riviera who run out of money via gambling addictions and decide to go into thievery - sort of Private Lives meets Trouble in Paradise. They are saved by a deux ex machina in the form of a thieving chauffeur.
It's okay but the second item on the program, Still Life is brilliant. Best known as Brief Encounter it's the terribly British tale of two married people who have a chaste love affair. Easy to mock, but impossible not to be moved by, it's done so well. David Mamet once wrote this was a great gay love story and you could read it that way, like every Coward play, but it is universal. (Would a gay version of this work? I don't think a gay couple would appreciate what they were doing was wrong so quickly.) I wonder how many adulterous relationships this inspired, real and imagined? Did it encourage people to stay true or to go for it? One of Coward's greatest works, and it's received a worthy production here.
No comments:
Post a Comment