"Present Laughter". Michael Pilch Studio. Review by Sam Wagman

In 1954, the poet T.S. Eliot remarked of Noël Coward’s writing: “There are things you can learn from Noël Coward that you won’t learn from Shakespeare”. The modernity and latent queerness of his work has always made it ripe for reinterpretation and lends itself marvellously to rapidly evolving notions of gender and sexuality. Queerness, in Coward’s world, is not a subtle tool; it’s a scythe by which to slash through the mundanity of the heteronormative and, as Andrew Scott (who played Garry Essendine in the 2019 revival of Present Laughter) noted, “sort of says it’s okay to live a life that’s less ordinary”. Whilst that blade of innovation is present in Clarendon Productions’ adaptation of Present Laughter, it all too often falls flat. To pay tribute to Coward’s larger-than-life creations is to deviate from them and subvert the subversive into something wholly modern for the 21^st century. This production, at points riotously funny, lacked the sense of passion and drive rampant within its source material.

And its source material is timeless. Present Laughter (derived from Twelfth Night's “present mirth hath present laughter”) follows a successful matinee star, Garry Essendine (Alfie Dry), as he prepares to tour ‘Africa’. Filled with farcical episodes, the play tails Garry as he finds himself in every sort of haphazard situation. We’re first introduced to the handsome young debutante Daphne Stillington (Catty Claire Williams Boyle in an almightily hilarious turn) the morning after a run-in with her idol, Garry. She’s spry and star-struck and totally ignored by the slew of wacky and solipsistic characters we’re then presented with. The scandi-esque Miss Erikson (Carys Howell), Garry’s proper secretary Monica Reed (Flora Symington), manager Morris Dixon (Chess Nightingale), and too-posh-to-function producer Henry Lyppiat (Joe Rachman) pay Daphne no heed in their obsessive claiming of the spotlight from Garry’s absorbent presence. Present Laughter, first and foremost, is a comic play, and first-time directors Susie Weidmann and Nicolas Rackow go ham on the laughs. Their adaptation focuses, rather too heavily, on the lewder aspects of Coward’s writing. The best part about sexual innuendo is that it’s necessarily implicit – the audience’s laughter should be one of gradual realisation, not forced participation. There’s only so many thrusts and signals to the crotch that can fill a production before it becomes fairly tedious and fundamentally unfunny, a trap that Present Laughter fell into over and over.

John Peter’s review of the 1998 Present Laughter revival, starring Ian McKellen, described the “wit” of the writing as lying in both the “situations and the language”. Certainly, the physical comedy of this adaptation’s cast is beyond reproach. Leah Aspden, as the fanatically demented budding playwright Roland Maule, is dazzlingly funny. Channelling the physicality of a mid-century Gollum, Aspden leaps, lunges, and sniffs her way around both the stage and Garry Essendine’s body in tremendously creepy fashion. Her facial expressions alone were enough to redeem even the most mind-numbingly flat sections of the production into something truly playful. Maule, much like every character in Coward’s work, is obsessed with its central leading man. However, Aspden’s interpretation of the character defies relegation to the side-lines, instead centring this middling production’s energy almost entirely on her contorted faces and frenzied deliveries. Carys Howell’s Miss Erikson is also deserving of commendation. A minor role by any standard, Howell’s stunted movements and monotonous Scandinavian drawl were technically impeccable and an example of how much can be done with so very little.

Garry Essendine himself was brought to us by Alfie Dry. Practically an institution in Oxford, this performance was a solid outing, although directorially confused. Essendine, an anagram for ‘neediness’, is a man plagued by fame and the limitations of image. The cracks in Garry’s façade are central to any performance of the character – this is a man teetering on the edge of the full knowledge that he is just one drop in a pond, but desperate to convince those around him that he’s the entire ocean. Dry’s performance is, well, just that. A performance. Dry nails the grandeur of Essendine’s self-created patina without ever prying further, instead relying on Coward’s writing to demonstrate Garry’s eventual grasping of his own vulnerability. Dry is a supremely talented entertainer, packing the stage with the sort of platitudes and dramatism that you’d expect from Garry’s matinee persona. I only wish we’d have gotten a character, in all his grace and despair, as opposed to the semblance of one.

Coward admitted, later on in his life, that Garry is essentially a caricature of himself; the on-stage heterosexual affairs functioning as a mirror to Coward’s own, various, homosexual relationships. Dry’s Essendine is far more explicitly queer – the occasional knowing glance toward the audience was coupled with overt references to the queerness of the text. There was, however, none of the theatrical risk or textual deviation that queerness should bring about. To so plainly modernize this production without daring to subvert Coward’s writing felt like a drastic disservice to the man himself. Upon Present Laughter’s original West End debut in 1942, there was no possibility of portraying a gay relationship onstage. But, whereas Coward was forced to transfigure his relationships into a normative mould, it would have elevated this adaptation to have risen to the parapet Coward constructed and attempted something truer to his vision than any traditionalist recital of lines.

Clarendon Productions, previously giving us Amadeus (MT23) and This House (HT23), has proven itself technically proficient on the largest and most unorthodox of stages. Present Laughter was no different. The Michael Pilch Studio has been transformed into Garry Essendine’s studio in meticulous fashion. The audience, cocooned within translucent drapery, reminiscent of Garry’s thinly-veiled loneliness and emptiness, spent much of the pre-show giggling at the various examples of Dry’s face photoshopped onto OUDS posters. Lucas Angeli’s set design is immaculately conceived; wood furnishings dotted by balloons and cigarettes, tattered chaise-longues, and endless bottles of booze peppered the stage. So too the lighting design, in which characters would repeatedly step up into a harsh spotlight away from the narcissism of their counterparts, was tactfully done.

Present Laughter is a dependable night out, regardless of the production, and Clarendon’s undertaking was not a fruitless effort. The comedic chops on offer were outstanding. Catty Claire Williams Boyle, Millie Deere, and Flora Symington all gave (wonderfully) unhinged performances as Daphne Stillington, Joanna Lyppiatt, and Monica Reed, respectively. Yet, I couldn’t help but feel that this production was a wasted opportunity for something more bombastic, sillier, and riskier, instead of the same-old farcical set-piece that established Coward in the first place. As Noël Coward himself said:

“Consider the public. Treat it with tact and courtesy. It will accept much from you if you are clever enough to win it to your side. Never fear it nor despise it. Coax it, charm it, interest it, stimulate it, shock it now and then if you must, make it laugh, make it cry and make it think, but above all…never, never, never bore the living hell out of it.”

This ‘Master’, as Lord Mountbatten dubbed him, would surely have demanded something “less ordinary” than what was on offer in the Pilch tonight. Something fiery, insubordinate, and nasty. Present Laughter was a sturdy showing, confident in its performances and shaky in its direction, but stopped short of igniting the Cowardian flame. Let us hope it didn’t die with the man himself.