Last scene Noël Coward wrote to receive its world premiere this month

The last scene Noël Coward wrote before his death in 1973, will receive its world premiere at A Marvellous Party, a fund-raising gala to celebrate the great British playwright’s life and works on November 17.

The gala, featuring stars including Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench, Marisha Wallace, Ian McKellen and Cush Jumbo, has been organised by producer Julian Bird, director Daniel Evans, Alan Brodie, chair of the Noël Coward Foundation, and Coward’s biographer Oliver Soden.

On this week’s episode of the WhatsOnStage Podcast, Soden exclusively revealed that the newly discovered scene is being performed for the first time. It comes from Coward’s final play Age Cannot Wither, of which only the first act has ever been seen. “And there will be other surprises too,” Bird promises.

The gala, at the Prince of Wales Theatre on 17 November, marks the culmination of Coward 125, two years of events marking the 50^th anniversary of his death. Its aim is to celebrate the sheer range and important of Coward’s work and his impact on the wider culture. “We’ve managed to show a little bit of all of him,” says Bird, who has produced the gala for Green Room Ents. “The comic playwright, the serious playwright, the diary keeper, the screenplay writer, the poet, the songwriter, the lyricist, the composer.”

He is particularly pleased that a younger generation of stars is discovering Coward’s humour and significance for the first time. “Some people think that Coward’s work is old-fashioned but it seems almost more relevant today than when it was written.”

Soden tells the podcast that it’s important to remember that in his day, Coward was “an angry young man” and people walked out of his plays because they were so scandalous and shocking. “He is the great playwright of the 20^th century – he sang the 20^th century blues.  He looks at the terrors and fears of the world and says we need to come up with new designs for living.”

The gala reflects this relevance to a younger generation. Alongside established stars such as McKellen, Lindsay Duncan, and Robert Lindsay, it will feature performers such as Alfred Enoch, Joshua James, and Giles Terera plus recipients of the Noël Coward Foundation bursaries. The Foundation is one of the charities being supported; the others are the Queen’s Reading Room and Acting For Others.

For Soden, it is an opportunity to link the past of British theatre with the present.  “It’s a hand hold across history,” he says. “We’ve got Derek Jacobi who was in as a young actor the production of Hay Fever in 1964 that brought Coward back into the public eye for his last glorious decade. We are one step away from working with Coward himself as a director. It’s historic.”