Coward Plays: 4: Blithe Spirit; Present Laughter; This Happy Breed; Tonight at 8.30 (ii): "Blithe Spirit", "Present Laughter", "This Happy B

comedy that centres around the spirit medium Madame Arcati. The play

that mocks sudden death was produced at precisely the moment when bombs

were bringing it to Britain "I shall ever be grateful, for the almost

psychic gift that enabled me to write Blithe Spiritin five days during

one of the darkest years of the war." The play was for years the

longest-running comedy in the history of British theatre. Present

Laughterfollows the life of Garry Essendine, a world-weary,

middle-aged projection of the dilettante, debonair persona -

self-obsessed and dressing-gowned who struts through the play like an

educated peacock. It is a comedy about the 'theatricals' that Noel best

knew and loved, and was originally a star vehicle for himself. It is

the closest to an autobiographical play that Coward ever wrote.

This

Happy Breedis a saga of a lower middle-class family; and three shorter

pieces fromTonight at 8.30 - is a farce set in the South of France,

and serves as an oblique tribute to Frederick Lonsdale; The Astonished

Heartis about the decay of a psychiatrist's mind through personal

sexual obsession. Red Peppers, which closes the volume, was a cynical

tribute to the lost music halls of the First World War.