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OH COWARD!

No taint of reality sullies Noel Coward. In his plays and musicals, no man toils, no woman spins and no child is seen, let alone heard. There are no families, only menages of bright, brittle and bizarre people for whom life is one long marvelous party. His is a hermetic world sealed against headlines, problems and pain, and most of all against boredom, which to Coward is the eighth deadly sin.

The stage is the only Eden that Coward knows about or cares about, and for half a century he has communicated his blissful delight with it. And that's what this new revue-styled evening of songs and patter off Broadway is--a blissful delight. There is the familiar and engaging Coward of Mad Dogs and Englishmen, I'll See You Again, Someday I'll Find You and I'll Follow My Secret Heart. These songs seem always to have existed, yet their sentiments are fresh as first love. The show also contains less familiar Coward, like Nina, a balky girl from Argentina who absolutely refused to "begin the beguine," and cursed people who "besought her to./ She cursed Cole Porter too." In A Bar on the Piccola Marina we meet the playful widow, Mrs. Wentworth Brewster, who was delighted when some young Italian sailors goosed her. And so it goes, all of it faintly scandalous, terribly urbane, romantic, fantastic and with a great to-do about not making a great to-do about sex.

Coward is a word wizard, but his subtlest gift is inflection, and he was master of the pause before Pinter was born. This sometimes defeats actors, but not the impeccably polished trio in this show. Roderick Cook, who devised and directed this production, has just the right air of bemused fatigue. He and his companions, Barbara Cason and Jamie Ross, sing and deliver their lines with sly, artful perfection. They help to make Oh Coward! the most marvelous party in town.

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