Pinkie and her lover get mixed up with gangsters, a lost package and a missing diamond necklace.
[2][3] The cast included Pat Kirkwood, Sylvia Cecil, Graham Payn, Jean Carson and Myles Eason.
[5] Despite its modest run, Ace of Clubs contained several songs that survived independently, in Coward's later cabaret acts and elsewhere, including "Sail Away" and "I Like America".
His 1945 revue Sigh No More ran for only 213 performances in the West End, and the failure of his musical Pacific 1860 in 1946–47 was in contrast to the success of the show that followed it at Drury Lane, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, which ran for more than ten times as long.
That evening, one of the girls mistakes the parcel for her birthday present and opens it, finding the purloined necklace.
Snyder and Gus open the parcel to find the birthday present, a pair of falsies.
The Times thought that Coward had striven too hard for popular success with his score: "In spite of the mixed reception it is possible that Ace of Clubs, for all its crudity and its slightly old-fashioned air, will give a great many people what they consider lively entertainment.
"[2] The Manchester Guardian was more favourable, calling the show "essentially a good-tempered frolic ... unlikely to knock spots off Oklahoma but it is in essence not only more genial, but more intelligent."
It praised Coward's protégé Graham Payn, who "dances with consummate grace ... singularly fresh and boyish", adding, whether innocently or not, "Benevolent Uncle Noel has found a first-class nephew".