Hands Across the Sea (play)

Hands Across the Sea, described by the author as "a comedy of bad manners", is a one-act play by Noël Coward, one of ten that make up Tonight at 8.30, a cycle written to be performed across three evenings.

The play, widely seen as caricaturing Coward's friends Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, depicts an upper class couple and their haphazard and chaotic reception of guests in their drawing room.

[2] He wrote, "A short play, having a great advantage over a long one in that it can sustain a mood without technical creaking or over padding, deserves a better fate, and if, by careful writing, acting and producing I can do a little towards reinstating it in its rightful pride, I shall have achieved one of my more sentimental ambitions.

(1923) and his comedy Private Lives (1930–31),[7] and he wrote the Tonight at 8.30 plays "as acting, singing and dancing vehicles for Gertrude Lawrence and myself".

[15] The New York run of the cycle, a limited season, as in London, ended prematurely because Coward was taken ill.[n 4] The main characters, a British couple, Commander Peter Gilpin and his wife Lady Maureen ("Piggie") Gilpin, were widely recognised as caricatures of Coward's friends Lord Louis ("Dickie") Mountbatten and his wife Edwina,[18] who, Coward later said, "used to give cocktail parties and people used to arrive that nobody had ever heard of and sit about and go away again; somebody Dickie had met somewhere, or somebody Edwina had met – and nobody knew who they were.

"[19] In the drawing room of the Gilpins' stylish Mayfair flat in London, Walters, the maid, takes a telephone message for her employers.

The caller is Mrs. Rawlingson with whom Maureen "Piggie" Gilpin and her friend Maud Dalborough once stayed when temporarily stranded in Samolo in the South Pacific during a world cruise.

As soon as the Gilpins leave the room, Walters ushers in Mr and Mrs Wadhurst, a couple whom Piggie and Maud met in Malaya.

Conversation is continually interrupted by the telephone on which Piggie and later Peter and Clare are called to talk to other friends, which they do uninhibitedly, to the confusion of the Wadhursts.

As Burnham creeps out, she, still unaware that he is not the Wadhursts' son, bids him goodbye: "It's been absolutely lovely, you're the sweetest family I've ever met in my life."

[26] Hands Across the Sea was included in the set of six plays from Tonight at 8.30 in an American tour starring Lawrence, with Graham Payn as co-star, directed by Coward.

[29] In 1981 at the Lyric Theatre in London Hands Across the Sea was given along with Shadow Play and Red Peppers, starring John Standing and Estelle Kohler.

Three members of the 1936 West End cast, Eveley Gregg, Alan Webb and Edward Underdown, played their original roles.

[38] BBC radio broadcast an adaptation in 1999 as part of the celebrations of the Coward centenary; Stephanie Beacham and Michael Cochrane played the Gilpins.