Shadow Play (play)
Under the influence of an unwisely large dose of sleeping pills, the wife has a dream that retells their story in hallucinatory form.
[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.
"[3] In 1935 he conceived the idea of a set of short plays, to run in varying permutations on three consecutive nights at the theatre.
(1923) and his comedy Private Lives (1930–31),[6] and he wrote the Tonight at 8.30 plays "as acting, singing and dancing vehicles for Gertrude Lawrence and myself".
They have been to the theatre together, but Vicky refuses to accompany Martha to a party because Simon Gayforth, her husband, is sure to be there with Sybil Heston, to whom he is clearly attracted.
Her admirer Michael Doyle rings up, and she tells him brusquely to call back tomorrow as she is too tired to talk now.
Sybil Heston appears in a pool of light, telling Simon that they must let Vicky know the truth; they are joined by Michael Doyle, who asks them to give her his love.
In another pool of light, Martha and George are seen in a car discussing the Gayforths' matrimonial troubles: Vicky runs on and accuses them of "spoiling it all".
There follow hallucinatory images of the Gayforths' honeymoon journey to Venice and a noisy nightclub where Sybil Heston and Michael Doyle dance together in a brilliant spotlight.
Lena, spotlit, is seen telephoning Martha asking her to come back to the house because Vicky is suffering from an overdose of sleeping tablets and Simon is alarmed about her.
[17] In 1946 Madge Elliott and Cyril Ritchard played the Gaythorpes in an Australian tour, in a bill also containing Ways and Means and Family Album.
[18] Shadow Play was revived on Broadway in 1948, with Lawrence as Vicky and Graham Payn as Simon, directed by Coward as part of a US tour of Tonight at 8.30.
[24] The Antaeus Company in Los Angeles revived all ten plays in October 2007,[25] and in 2009 the Shaw Festival did likewise.
[26] In the first professional revival of the cycle in Britain,[n 7] given by English Touring Theatre in 2014, Olivia Poulet and Rupert Young played the Gayforths.
[29] In 1954 Otto Preminger directed a Producers' Showcase television production of Shadow Play, featuring Ginger Rogers and Gig Young, along with Still Life and Red Peppers.
[33] The Observer reported, "A neat production, coupled with one first-rate song, 'You Were There,' whose tune is one of the best in the tender line that Mr Coward has ever given us, carries this fantasy with a dancing motion past the banalities on which it might easily stumble."
The Manchester Guardian called the play "warmed with human feeling", though doubting the durability of the couple's reconciliation.
It was reprised by me later in the show while Gertie was scrambling breathlessly into a grey bouffant dress in the quick-change room at the side of the stage.
