Cavalcade (play)
It focuses on three decades in the life of the Marryots, an upper-middle-class British family, and their servants, beginning in 1900 and ending in 1930, a year before the premiere.
It is set against major historical events of the period, including the Relief of Mafeking; the death of Queen Victoria; the sinking of the RMS Titanic; and World War I.
Cochran was unable to do so, but was able to book the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which was not much smaller,[1] provided Coward could guarantee an approximate opening date.
[2] Coward and his designer Gladys Calthrop inspected Drury Lane and found it adequate in terms of the size of its stage and its technical facilities, although two extra hydraulic lifts had to be installed for quick changes of scenery, and unlike the Coliseum it lacked the revolving stage Coward wanted.
[2][3] While Calthrop began designing hundreds of costumes and twenty-two sets, Coward worked on the script, which he completed in August 1931.
[5] With four hundred cast and crew members involved in the production, Coward divided the crowd into groups of twenty and assigned each a leader.
Extras were encouraged to create their own bits of stage business, as long as it did not draw attention from the main action of the scene.
[6] Cavalcade premiered on 13 October 1931, starring Mary Clare and Edward Sinclair as the Marryot parents and featuring John Mills, Binnie Barnes, Una O'Connor, Moya Nugent, Arthur Macrae, Irene Browne and Maidie Andrews in supporting roles.
Their happiness is clouded by the Boer War: Jane's brother is besieged in Mafeking, and Robert himself will shortly be going to South Africa.
Hearing her two boys stirring upstairs, Jane runs up to see after them, and her husband calls to her to bring them down to join the adults.
Joe throws a toy at Edith, and is sharply slapped by Jane, whose nerves are on edge with anxiety about her brother and her husband.
The plot is the usual froth, but the denouement is not reached: the theatre manager comes onstage to announce that Mafeking has been relieved.
The cook, Annie the parlourmaid, and Ellen's mother Mrs Snapper are preparing a special tea to greet Bridges on his return from the war.
Robert, who was awarded the Victoria Cross is walking in the procession, and Jane has some difficulty in making her boys suppress their excitement and pay due respect as the coffin passes.
With tears streaming down her face, she cheers wildly and waves a rattle, while the band plays "Land of Hope and Glory ".
The play was first revived in the West End in 1966, at the Scala Theatre, with a cast of 96 drama students from the Rose Bruford College.
[8] In 1995 a production starring Gabrielle Drake and Jeremy Clyde as Jane and Robert Maryott played at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London and on tour.
[14] Opening just before the British General Election, the play's strongly patriotic themes were credited by the Conservative Party for helping them secure a large percentage of the middle class votes, despite the fact Coward had conceived the project a full year before the election was held, and strenuously denied having any thought of influencing its outcome.
[15][n 2] King George V and Queen Mary attended the performance on election night and received Coward in the Royal Box during the second interval.
[17] In The Daily Mail for 1 November 1931, Alan Parsons wrote: When the curtain fell last night at Drury Lane on Mr Noel Coward's Cavalcade, there was an ovation such as I have not heard in very many years' playgoing.
And therein lies the whole secret of Cavalcade—it is a magnificent play in which the note of national pride pervading every scene and every sentence must make each one of us face the future with courage and high hopes.
[18]Reviewing the 1999 revival, Michael Billington wrote that it displayed the contradictory elements in Coward's writings, a show "traditionally seen as a patriotic pageant about the first 30 years of the century" but strongly anti-militaristic and portraying "the anger that bubbles away among the working class".
He concluded, "Cavalcade is actually about the way the high hopes at the start of the century have turned to senseless slaughter and hectic hedonism".
(HMV C2289) Coward himself recorded "Lover of My Dreams" (the Mirabelle Waltz Song), with, on the reverse, "Twentieth Century Blues", played by the New Mayfair Novelty Orchestra, with vocal by an unnamed singer identified by Mander and Mitchenson as Al Bowlly.
(HMV B4001) Cavalcade—Vocal Medley: On this Coward sings "Soldiers of the Queen", "Goodbye, Dolly", "Lover of My Dreams", "I do Like to be Beside the Seside", "Goodbye, My Bluebell", "Alexander's Ragtime Band", "Everybody's Doing It", "Let's All Go Down the Strand", "If You were the Only Girl", "Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty", "There's a Long, Long Trail", "Keep the Home Fires Burning", and "Twentieth Century Blues".
