"NOEL, NOEL, NOEL, NOEL"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 80, 3 January 1941, Page 2

"NOEL, NOEL, NOEL, NOEL"

Brilliant Young Man Turned Publicist

(Written for "The Listener" by

C. R.

ALLEN

HEN "The Young Idea" was produced at the Savoy Theatre with the author as jeune premier, and Miss Kate Cutler as grand dame, Noel Coward’s boy and girl friends assembled and chanted "Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel." That is not exactly yesterday, and in the interim the actor-composer-drama-tist-producer has covered much ground. He has encountered the sunshine that played upon "Hay Fever" and the storm that burst upon " Sirocco." He has now followed the lead of Barrie and turned publicist. As a child player Noel Coward appeared in " Peter Pan" and " Where the Rainbow Ends." He was not actually at the Italia Conti School, but he must have learned much from that redoubtable trainer of stage children, who delivers the goods, or used to do so, piping hot and word-perfect. The present writer once required a child to play the part of "The Boy With The Torn Doublet" in a little fantasy called "The Four Foundlings." When the costume was handed over at Miss Conti’s office in Orchard Street she boggled at the rent already effected in the article in question. That has nothing to do with Noel Coward, except in so far as it throws light on Italia Conti for whom, and for

whose sister, Noel Coward as a little boy had an endearing soubriquet which unfortunately eludes me at the moment. Noel Coward was the stage child in excelsis. His father, as all readers of " Present Indicative" know, sold pianos, or tried to. A boy’s best friend is his mother, as the old song used to remind us, and Noel Coward seems to have been on excellent terms with his. In this respect he resembles another dramatist, John Van Druten. Both lads were a source of

anxiety to their mothers by reason of certain constitutional deficiencies which they have both effectually outgrown. If you were to ask me in what play Noel

Coward approached perfection I wouid reply "The Marquise." With him the family album has become a kind of cornucopia, pouring out scenes and situations, cameos and topical what-nots with a profusion that we well might envy- " Cavalcade," of course, represents him at his most comprehensive. No one but an actor-dramatist would have thought of a life-belt bearing the words "Titanic" as a background for one of the most poignant cameos in the whole collection. Noel Coward’s visit to New Zealand will give him another vignette to his crowded travelogue book.