Star and Entourage

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

PRESENT LAUGHTER

by NOEL COWARD

"I have never been spoken to like that in my entire life," says the pretty, pushy woman who has elbowed her way into the briskly cross-talking circle around egomaniac Matinee Idol Garry Essendine. "Well, make the most of it," he replies, throwing the line casually away over his shoulder, serenely confident that there are hundreds more where that one came from.

There is nothing misplaced about that confidence; Essendine, though near farcical in his heterosexuality, is nevertheless Playwright Coward's most detailed self-caricature. The people who dance attendance on him are all parodistically based on people who surrounded Coward when he was at the height of his fame in prewar London. First produced there in 1942, and now revived at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Present Laughter lacks the geometrically perfect craftsmanship of Private Lives and has too little narrative drive to be ranked among the elegant best of Coward's works.

Dollop of Charm. Yet it was Sir Noel's last great commercial success, and it has its virtues--notably as a study of that curious and enduring institution, the show-biz entourage. Like most stars, Essendine cannot live with the fatuities of his followers. Nor can he be without their faithful responses to every shift in pressure registered by his absurdly delicate inner barometer. For their part, his manager, his producer, his ex-wife and the women who will not be denied his bed are ever willing to allow him to quell their exasperation with a dollop of charm, always measured out at precisely the moment it is required.

As Essendine, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. emphasizes the childish charm of his old chum Coward. Theatrically, this is a wise decision. The slightest stress on what can only be called the sadomasochistic implications of Essendine's relationships with his clan could easily spoil the evening. It is much better to let the unbitter truthfulness of the writing steal over one later. Excepting Fairbanks and George Pentecost as a comically clumsy young playwright, the cast, which includes Jane Alexander and Ilka Chase, never quite achieves the sense of giddy weightlessness that a Coward comedy should have. Still, the players at least sense that there is more here than period grace, that this is a piece to be acted, not condescended to. Modern audiences are seldom spoken to as Coward spoke, and there is a great pleasure in making the most of it.

--Richard Schickel

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.