Three Triples

Noel Coward is not so penetrating a comedian or author as Sacha Guitry, but Mr. Coward has the good fortune to write and act in English, the language which pays best. He is not nearly so funny a playwright as George S. Kaufman, but he is more versatile, more productive, does all his own work. He never brought to his upper-class tragicomedies the range or authority or humor of Philip Barry, but he has lasted longer. All these qualities which Noel Coward has and has not have made him the world's most prosperous showman. He has written 26 plays and musicomedies since 1920, acted, danced, sung in most of them. In the past ten years he has grossed more than $5,000,000 in the U. S. and British theatre.

Showmanship on the Coward scale is almost big business. To handle the money end of his affairs he has headquarters in London, where he is called "The Great White Father," another in Manhattan's RKO Building, where there is a photomural of a scene from his Bittersweet. In each of these places, head man is a tall (6 ft.), graceful Yaleman (1922) of 37--John C. Wilson of Trenton, N. J. After college he escaped briefly from Wall Street when given a small part in a road company of Polly Preferred. Back in trade, he got Noel Coward's brokerage account for Chas. D. Barney & Co. in 1925. Now the Coward business manager and producer, his name appeared last week as entrepreneur of a whole festival of Coward plays which arrived in Manhattan. Actor-Author Coward had written them, directed them, scored them for music, provided in each a part for himself and Gertrude Lawrence. In so doing he seemed in a fair way to add to his record pile.

Tonight at 8:30 is three groups of three short plays. Each group fills an evening.

They range in time from 1860 to 1936, in place from the Straits Settlements to provincial England, in mood from musical revue mirth to suicidal despair. Any couple who wished to see the whole cycle in orchestra seats would have to spend $26.40 at box-office prices. Of the nine shows," the couple would probably prefer: Hands Across the Sea, in which a charming but light-headed Mayfair hostess invites some Colonial acquaintances to an impromptu cocktail party, then forgets who they are.

Fumed Oak, "an unpleasant comedy" in which a lower-class family's sodden routine is disrupted when the husband rebels, abandons it.

Ways & Means, a farce about two bankrupt professional guests who are luckily burgled, persuade the burglar to rob someone else and split the proceeds.

Still Life, a compassionate study of two middle-aged lovers who begin and end their hopeless affair in a station restaurant.

"Red Peppers," in which an indignant, third-rate English variety team gives a provincial theatre a ribald Saturday night.

Of the oldest production arrangements in the modern theatre is the "triple bill." Of the nine plays in his three triples, Playwright Coward is at pains to have it known: "All . . . have been written especially.

There has been no unworthy scuffling in cupboards and bureau drawers in search of forgotten manuscripts, and no hurried refurbishing of old, discarded ideas. The primary object of the scheme is to provide a full and varied evening's entertainment for theatregoers who, we hope, will try their best to overcome any latent prejudices they may have against short plays and, at least, do us the honour of coming to judge for themselves." On the strength of the dramaturgy he has put into Tonight at 8:30, Noel Coward will win no Nobel Prize. As personal vehicles for two of the most attractive stage stars on either side of the Atlantic, most of the nine playlets are more than adequate. Actor Coward's talent for delivering his own biting lines as the dreary suburbanite of Fumed Oak, the amiably distracted husband of Hands Across the Sea, will surprise few who have seen him in such past self-made classics as Private Lives and Design for Living. Those who saw Miss Lawrence in Chariot's Revue or Oh, Kay! may not be surprised at her witty delivery in Hands Across the Sea, or her graceful singing and dancing in the otherwise mediocre Shadow Play. But neither critics nor playgoers were prepared for the depth and breadth of her performances in the more serious roles, particularly the shrewish wife in Fumed Oak, the romance-starved adulteress in Still Life.

That many a Manhattan theatregoer, like many a Londoner last year, would do smart Mr. Coward and glamorous Miss Lawrence the honor of going to see their show was plain. They were also given another tribute. First smash hit of a middling season, Tonight at 8:30 was seized upon by speculators who bought up 408 of the theatre's 508 orchestra seats for the next three months.

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