Present Laughter

Synopsis

Gary Essendine is the complete actor - self-obsessed, talented, sexy and charming - but his life is one long act. Haunted by the trauma of turning 40 he goes in for a string of one-night stands and casual flings but with so many under his spell he finds himself trapped in a position even he can't charm his way out of.

Our Review:

3 October 2007

In no other play did Noel Coward define the public image of himself more than he did in Present Laughter, which he wrote in 1939 and appeared in three years later after a delay caused by the outbreak of war.

Gary Essendine is a monstrously vain actor at the centre of a small, dedicated coterie. For all the brilliance of the writing, Coward still sounds deep and melancholy notes about the price of celebrity, the demands of fame (“I belong to the public,” he cries) and the resentment he feels at being a breadwinner for everyone else.

There’s a moment in Howard Davies’ oddly brusque and charmlessly monumental production in the Lyttelton when Alex Jennings as Gary flops in a chair and listens dreamily to the love duet from New Moon by Oscar Hammerstein and Sigmund Romberg. It’s not in the stage directions, but the song, and Jennings’ face, confirms Gary’s regret at not living a “normal” life such as that of his valet Fred (Tony Turner) or...

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Latest User Review

Wesley Henderson-Roe - 5 January 2008:

Pondorous & self-absorbed. We left at the interval....

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