Noel Coward is remembered as a playwright and actor most often associated with the West End and London. Yet, his work has been performed for decades on stages across Nottingham’s leading theatres, with his film adaptations regularly screened in our historic cinemas. The Midlands also became something of a retreat for him. Here’s the role that our part of the world played in his life…
Coward was just a teenager when he met the painter, Philip Streatfeild, in 1913. It is thought that Coward’s mother introduced them while she worked as a cleaner at his studio on Glebe Street in London. Despite the age gap, the two went on vacations together, and Coward became his protégé and, as some have speculated, his lover too.
When World War One broke out, Streatfeild joined the Sherwood Foresters as a 2nd Lieutenant in 1914. Unfortunately, he contracted tuberculosis in the trenches in France and died at home in 1915 at the age of 35. As a well-connected society painter, Streatfeild brought Coward into his world – introducing him to literature and other notable homosexual men. Before he died, he wrote to his friend, Mrs Eva Astley Paston Cooper, to ask if there was any way she would consider looking after the young, ‘delicate’ Noel.
Cooper invited Noel to her home – a large Victorian mansion called Hambleton Hall, near Oakham in the Midlands. Hambleton had been built as a hunting box in 1881 by Walter Marshall, but it passed to Eva in 1899. Eva was an eccentric woman in her fifties, who turned her home into a glamorous salon where she invited theatrical, creative, and often homosexual men to visit for drinks and discussion. Coward however, even later in the 60s, would refuse to confirm his sexual orientation publicly – observing, “There are still a few old ladies in Worthing who don’t know.”
Eva wasn’t worried about homosexuality. She was described as “totally unshockable” by those who knew her. Her granddaughter said, “She collected rather weird friends.” Her ‘weird friends’ included Malcom Sargent, C.K. Scott Moncrief and James Lee Miller, all of whom attended the social gatherings.
Coward was not so gushing when describing Eva – “Mrs Cooper was gay company. Her principal pleasure was to lie flat on her back upon a mattress in front of the fire and shoot off witticisms in a sort of petulant wail,” he said. Though this never stopped him from visiting. He claimed that he wrote the play Hay Fever about her in 1925. Towards the end of the 1920s, Nottingham theatres had a run of Coward’s plays at Theatre Royal and The Palace in Newark. It’s quite possible that this is where he was staying during that time.
He could either be very grand and shoot you down in flames, or he could be very sympathetic and understanding
The first play he wrote was The Vortex, which premiered in 1924 and featured themes of drug use and adultery. In casting, Coward appointed Nottingham-born, camp, female impersonator, Douglas Byng to play the character of the vicar. Byng brought the house down with the musical number, Even Clergymen are Naughty Every Now and Again.
Coward and Byng worked together in many plays and sketches. Most notably, Oranges and Lemons, where Byng played one of two old ladies going to bed on New Year’s Eve in a boarding house. Rumour has it that Byng and Coward both had an affair with the bisexual Prince George, although Noel described it as a “little dalliance”.
When asked by a reporter about what Coward was like to work with, Byng replied, “Marvellous! He was always very nice to me. He could either be very grand and shoot you down in flames, or he could be very sympathetic and understanding.”
Coward’s most risque play, Design for Living, premiered in 1932 in New York, and was made into a film the following year. The play, which was about a woman in love with two men, starred Fredric March, Gary Cooper, and Miriam Hopkins. It is still thought to have homosexual undertones today, which makes it even more remarkable that it was made, given homosexuality's illegality at the time.
It was shown at the Empress Theatre on St. Ann’s Well Road in 1934, with the cinema billing it as a “dramatic and distracting play of a woman who loved two men… completely… simultaneously…” Audiences loved it and couldn’t get enough, so it ran for six days. The press was less amused. “Not a very pleasant subject, even for a farce, which most of this play is,” the Nottingham papers wrote.
Coward came to Nottingham in 1942 with a series of his plays: This Happy Breed, Blithe Spirit and Present Laughter. This was billed as a ‘return’ although it was not specified when he was last here, though it was likely to be the 1920s, as he stayed with Eva. Reviewers said that while the subject matter of Blithe Spirit was “somewhat grim”, the play was “brilliantly written stuff.”
Audiences were perhaps in no mood for the dark, though comedic storyline, which featured a scene gone wrong, as World War Two had started in 1939. Cinemas and theatres were an escape from death and destruction at this stage – not a reminder of it. At the same time, Eva threw open the doors of Hambleton Hall to create a recovery home for wounded soldiers. It came to be known as ‘Heaven on the Hill’ by those who stayed there, until she passed away in 1944. The house still has a room called ‘the Noel Coward room’, though it is now a hotel.
Blithe Spirit had the record of being the longest-running play in the West End, but it was knocked off the top spot by Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap. Mousetrap had its world premiere at the Nottingham Theatre Royal, as Christie stayed at the County Hotel next door in 1952. Coward sent Christie a telegram to congratulate her on the success. He wrote, “Much as it pains me, I really must congratulate you on The Mousetrap breaking the long-run record. All my good wishes. Noël Coward.”
In 2011, the telegram was discovered wedged in a piece of furniture. Mousetrap is still performed today. The play is the inspiration for the name of the new bar, The Mousetrap Social, which has just opened across the road from Theatre Royal.
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