The Vortex

The play depicts the sexual vanity of a rich, ageing beauty, her troubled relationship with her adult son, and drug abuse in British society circles after the First World War.

Forster paid no attention, and Coward immediately went across and embraced Grace, as a silent rebuke to the young woman who had made the remark.

[3] To add to the dramatic effect of his play, Coward included a further source of conflict between the mother, Florence, and son, Nicky.

[6] The literary critic John Lahr writes that Coward pushed at the prevailing moral boundaries of the day: "His straight-talking about homosexuality – the issue disguised as drug-taking in The Vortex and the code behind the frivolity in his great comedies – was as far as he could go.

[13] When the money for the production threatened to run out during rehearsals, Coward secured the necessary funding from his friend the author Michael Arlen.

[15] Upset by a last-minute revision that increased Coward's role and, she believed, diminished the importance of hers, the female star, Kate Cutler, dropped out less than two weeks before the premiere.

[16] Coward was able to engage the veteran actress Lilian Braithwaite, who accepted the part for the small salary offered and learned it at very short notice.

[17] The Vortex opened at the Everyman Theatre, Hampstead, North London on 25 November 1924, with the following cast:[18] The production was well received for its passionate acting and became a sensation because of its scandalous subject matter.

Coward and Basil Dean directed and the cast was:[29] This was followed by an American tour, in which Rose Hobart replaced Molly Kerr.

He is engaged to Bunty Mainwaring, a journalist; his mother Florence, an ageing socialite beauty, has extramarital affairs with younger men in an attempt to recapture her youth.

Nicky struggles with the simmering resentment he feels for his vainglorious and promiscuous mother, his own weakness for cocaine, and, in the view of some commentators, his repressed homosexuality.

Also in the cast were Adrianne Allen (Helen), Robert Andrews (Quentin), Sylvia Coleridge (Clara), Nicholas Hannen (David) and Peter Jones (Bruce).

It starred real-life mother and son Lia Williams as Florence and Joshua James as Nicky, with Priyanga Burford as Helen.

"[48] In a review of Peter Hall's 2008 production Christopher Hart wrote in The Sunday Times that the climactic confrontation between Nicky and Florence is "suddenly, less brittle Coward than howling Strindberg, all revulsion and choking disgust at life in general and 'the utter foulness of growing old' in particular.

These two damaged but hitherto seemingly trivial characters powerfully draw our empathy now, in all their weltering petulance, vanity and self-pity.