Easy Virtue (play)
The Vortex (1924) had been a controversial sensation on both sides of the Atlantic with its portrayal of recreational drug taking and veiled references to homosexuality; his comedy Hay Fever (1925) achieved box-office success in the West End.
[3] In 1926, after a week's pre-London try-out in Manchester, it opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End, where it ran for 124 performances, from 9 June to 2 October.
[3][4] Both productions were directed by Basil Dean, and starred Jane Cowl as Larita, Mabel Terry-Lewis as Mrs Whittaker, and Joyce Carey as Sarah.
Her performance in the lead role was more melodramatic than he thought ideal, but it was popular with audiences, and he admitted that the box-office success of the play owed much to her.
Mrs Whittaker has "the stern repression of any sexual emotions; all her life has brought her to middle age with a faulty digestion which doesn't so much sour her temper as spread it.
"[8] She is with her religiously zealous daughter Marion and her husband, Colonel Whittaker, "A grey haired man of about fifty – his expression is generally resigned.
The younger daughter, Hilda, enters ("nineteen and completely commonplace") with news that the Whittakers' only son John had married earlier while holidaying in the south of France – he and his bride Larita will arrive soon.
Marion leaves, and Philip arrives to ask Larita to reserve a dance for him – a request which is picked up on by an increasingly jealous Hilda.
At afternoon tea (John is not present), Hilda delivers a newspaper cutting revealing that Larita was involved in a court case regarding a man's suicide, as well as list of many of her lovers.
Larita throws her book in frustration, accidentally (but without regret) breaking a plaster copy of the Venus de Milo in the process.
Larita has a moment with Charles, and explains why she married John: "I thought that any other relationship would be cheapening and squalid – I can't imagine how I could have been such a fool."
In 1988 the play was revived at the small King's Head Theatre in Islington, London, featuring Jane How as Larita with Ronnie Stevens and Avril Angers as Colonel and Mrs Whittaker.
[12] The production transferred to the Garrick Theatre in the West End, with Zena Walker taking over the role of Mrs Whittaker; the play ran there from 13 April throughout the rest of 1988.
[13] In a 1999 revival at the Chichester Festival Theatre, Greta Scacchi played Larita, with Michael Jayston and Wendy Craig as Colonel and Mrs Whittaker.
[17] The anonymous reviewer in The Times found the play "smooth in manner, quick in detailed observation, easy in speech", but the setting and plot "manufactured" and not wholly convincing.
[18] Reviewing the 1988 revival, Michael Coveney called the play "a fascinating blend of the country house ill-manners of [Hay Fever] and the late Victorian problem drama".
[19] In The Times, Jeremy Kingston judged Larita to be "one of the first human women Coward created"; he thought the most likely reason for the neglect of the piece was its unusually large cast.
[22] A 2008 remake by Ealing Studios, with Stephan Elliott co-writing and directing, starred Jessica Biel, Ben Barnes, Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas.
It differs from the play in several major respects: the character of Charles Burleigh is removed and amalgamated into the characters of Philip Hurst and Major Whittaker (who had been a captain who led his entire company to death); Larita's husband did not divorce her, but instead died after she euthanised him with poison to accelerate his lingering death from cancer; and the structure is rearranged so that the fight with John's family occurs at the end of the movie, after John refuses to dance with his wife.
A 1999 BBC Radio 3 recording, adapted and directed by Maria Aitken, starred Anton Lesser, Rupert Penry-Jones, Jack Davenport, Anna Massey and Victoria Hamilton.
