"Noël and Gertie' at the Walnut's Independence Studio 3 (1st review)

There was a time, before the advent of movies and TV, when grander-than-life personalities like John Barrymore and Tallulah Bankhead graced the three-dimensional stage, blurring the fine line between emoting for the audience and hamming it up for their own benefit. (Audience members sometimes complained that Bankhead's refusal to wear panties on stage distracted them from the plot.)

So you'd think a revue spotlighting the unique artistic talents of two such shining lights of 20th Century theater— Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence— would be scintillating, engrossing and endlessly entertaining. Coward was a celebrated English wit and dramatist. Lawrence was a legendary star of the musical stage. By most accounts, neither of them ever bored anybody.

Why, then, did I feel the pain of the woman beside me who kept checking her watch in between songs? And why did go home from Noël and Gertie without a single tune humming in my head, not even Coward's catchy "Mrs. Worthington" (she of "Don't put your daughter on the stage" fame).

Because that night there was no Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence on the stage— not even a reasonable expectation of them.

Instead, the Sheridan Morley script offered a quick summary of a long friendship and brief collaboration (Coward and Lawrence produced only two works together) without providing much hint of the protagonists' personalities.

Unanswered question

Susan Wilder is given the odious task of singing Gertrude Lawrence without any of Lawrence's well known self-possessive fervor while director Will Stutts, as Coward, harps away about writing for his all-inspiring muse (Lawrence) while worrying that he'll never be taken seriously as a dramatist. But how exactly was Lawrence pivotal to Coward's career? Good question, and one not answered here.

Lawrence comes across as a selfish, ego-driven indulgent sorceress without an ounce of empathy— not surprisingly, since the story of their friendship/collaboration is told solely through Noël Coward's eyes. The real Gertrude Lawrence was, by all accounts, a dynamo, a favorite for Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals— not a flaxen vain bellwether who existed solely to pipe out Coward's efforts.

Coward, meanwhile, comes across as just plain nasty. As a result, I wound up hating both of them. For all Coward's blather about their unbinding friendship, this looks more like a simple case of misery loving company. You don't want to hear this twosome singing alone, together, or to the audience, no matter how clever Coward's lyrics.

Snappy dialogue

The costumes and stage designs of Mark Marian and Andrew Thompson do capture the spirit of sophisticated madcap merriment that characterized the art deco age. The earnest piano playing of Owen Robbins complements what ought to be snappy dialogue. But the best lines in Noël and Gertie come not from Sheridan Morley but from Coward's own Blithe Spirit and Private Lives.

In any case, Gertie managed her career quite nicely, with or without her childhood buddy. The Walnut's mainstage downstairs is currently playing The King and I. Lawrence was the original Anna.


♦


To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.