Present Laughter opens at the Gate Theatre on Tuesday 14th July, low price previews from Thursday 9th July. Performances run Monday through Saturday at 8pm with Saturday matinees at 3pm on selected dates.
Noël Coward, an astounding polymath, actor, writer, composer, lyricist, painter and wit was defined by his Englishness as much as he defined it and had much more than what he called merely a “talent to amuse”. In a life of 73 years Coward wrote nearly 50 plays, over 400 songs and lyrics, books of verse, sketches, satire, short stories and a novel. His celebrity had reached a peak in 1939 with Present Laughter, by which time he had become the highest earning author in the western world. Since his death, his reputation as the personification of wit and sophistication has grown…little wonder he was and still is respectively know as ‘The Master’.
From the creative team that brought you the highly acclaimed Gate Theatre productions of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (2005), W. Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife (2006) and Noël Coward’s Private Lives (2007), comes Coward’s brilliant comedy of manners, oozing with charm, panache and verbal wizardry. At the centre of his own carpe diem universe sits matinee idol Garry Essendine; suave, debonair, hedonistic and advancing, with every sign of reluctance, into middle age. His private life, the demands of his ex-wife and various adoring girlfriends is tolerated until he goes too far and plays a little to close to home. Just before he escapes, the full extent of his misdemeanours is exposed and all hell breaks loose.
Stephen Brennan stars as Garry Essendine, with Fiona Bell, Barbara Brennan, Michael James Ford, Peter Gaynor, John Kavanagh, Paris Jefferson, Dermot Magennis, Fiona O'Shaughnessy Susan FitzGerald and Jade Yourell. Alan Stanford directs, with set design by Eileen Diss, costumes by Peter O’Brien, lighting by James McConnell and composition and sound by Denis Clohessy.
‘Coward at his peak…the dialogue sparkles, the laughs come easily’-Observer |
