Semi-Monde
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The first single edition of Noël Coward's most controversial play.
"Only
in Semi-Monde does Coward find a successful metaphor for the sexual
complications that lie behind his posturing. Semi-Monde is easily the
most visually daring of his comedies, and the most intellectually
startling ... made up of sexually mischievous tableaux
vivants and gets much nearer the homosexual knuckle than Coward's
public image allowed." - (John Lahr, London Review of Books)
Written
in 1926 and originally entitled Ritz Bar, Semi-Monde was considered too
daring for its time: "its production in London or New York seemed
unlikely as some of the characters, owing to lightly suggested
abnormalities, would certainly be deleted by the censor" (Noël Coward,
Present Indicative). The play finally received its public premiere only
after Coward's death, at the Citizen's Theatre, Glasgow, in September
1977.
Noël Coward
Noël Coward was born in 1899 in Teddington, Middlesex. He made his name as a playwright with The Vortex (1924), in which he also appeared. His numerous other successful plays included Fallen Angels (1925), Hay Fever (1925), Private Lives (1933), Design for Living (1933) and Blithe Spirit (1941). During the war he wrote screenplays such as Brief Encounter (1944) and In Which We Serve (1942). In the fifties he began a new career as a cabaret entertainer. He published volumes of verse and a novel (Pomp and Circumstance, 1960), two volumes of autobiography and four volumes of short stories: To Step Aside (1939), Star Quality (1951), Pretty Polly Barlow (1964) and Bon Voyage (1967). He was knighted in 1970 and died three years later in Jamaica.
More by Noël Coward
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