Musical Plays and Revues

This is the place to explore and enjoy Noël Coward's musical plays and revues.

A Beginning

Noël Coward spent Christmas 1922 as the guest of Ned Lathom (3rd Earl of Lathom, Edward Bootle-Wilbraham) and his sister Barbara at Davos in Switzerland where he joined a party of showbusiness guests at The Grand Hotel, Davos-Platz - Coward stayed at the Hotel Belvedere. Here he convinced Ned and eventually the theatrical impressario André Charlot, to provide the finance and opportunity for a revue that became London Calling - named after a new radio station call sign. This was Noël's first revue - a complex style of entertainment of songs and sketches that grew out of the Victorian music-hall and became a major form of entertainment in the 1920s and 30s. Charlot trusted Ned Lathom's money but not the young Noël's ability to write and paired him with an established writer, Ronald Jeans, who wrote the book for the revue. Noël found the art of revue 'a very tricky and technical business... everything has to be condensed to an apalling brevity.'

The revue, staged in 1923, was a great success with Fred Astair helping with some choreography and Elsie Tree his arranger, orchestrator and general factotum getting involved at the beginning of an association with Noël that lasted until 1946.

A song featured in the revue was to provide Coward with an early musical success - Parisian Pierrot sung by Gertrude Lawrence and featured towards the end of the show. This extract is taken from the CD Star! (Living Era CD AJA 5265) (NCMI) Buy? - in the UK & US

Those musicals below marked with an * have still to be completed.

Recordings listed on the pages shown below are under one of three headings used in the NCMI. Original cast Recordings (OCR); Recordings by Noël Coward (NCR) and Other Notable Recordings (ONR). More detail on this is given in Abbreviations in the NCMI.
Revues and Musical Plays by Noël Coward				- select a title to find out more. . .
Year	Revues		Year	Plays with Music
1923	London Calling		1934	Conversation Piece
1925	On With the Dance		1960	Waiting in the Wings
1928	This Year of Grace!		1935	Red Peppers (from Tonight at 8:30)
1932	Words and Music
1938	Set to Music		Year	Musical Plays based on Coward's work
1945	Sigh No More		1964	High Spirits
Year	Musical Plays and Operettas		Year	Musical Revues and Gala Concerts
1929	Bitter Sweet		1968	Noël Coward's Sweet Potato
1938	Operette		1969	A Talent To Amuse
1946	Pacific 1860		1972	Cowardy Custard *
1950	Ace of Clubs		1972	Oh Coward!
1954	After The Ball		1982	Noël and Gertie (in the US If Love Were All) *
1961	Sail Away		1994	Let's Do It *	A scene from Ace of Clubs with
1963	The Girl Who Came to Supper		1999	Blithe Spirit (Radio) *	Graham Payn and Pat Kirkwood
			1999	Coward Centenary *