On the day I was scheduled to see a preview performance of Love, Noël: The Songs and Letters of Noël Coward, it was announced that the great Hal Prince had died. It seemed fitting, even comforting, to spend that evening taking in a tribute to another long-reigning giant of the theater—though in Coward’s case, that stature was more a measure of breadth than depth.
As Lord Mountbatten once noted, in a quote cited in this revue, it was by being a jack of many trades—playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, director, author and painter, to name a few—that Coward acquired the title “The Master.” Happily, Love, Noël –devised and written by Barry Day, literary advisor to Coward’s estate, and helmed in this New York premiere by Irish Repertory Theatre’s artistic director, Charlotte Moore—does service to its subject’s legendarily sharp wit and the softer feelings that could inform it, to charming and moving effect.
Much credit also belongs to the stars of this production, cabaret veterans Steve Ross and KT Sullivan, who milk the material for all its humor and poignance. Ross, in a natty tux, plays piano and dips into Coward’s persona in reading his letters and regaling us with his observations, as Sullivan, wrapped in a flowing, glittering red dress—James Morgan’s spare, elegant set places them between a bouquet of matching red and white flowers and a bust of Coward’s head—revives a string of accomplished women who inspired and amused Coward, from Gertrude Lawrence to Marlene Dietrich to England’s Queen Mother.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★★ review here.]
If Sullivan’s careful, quavering soprano proves a natural fit for old favorites such as “Mad About the Boy” and “If Love Were All,” she also gets to show off her skills as a parodist—aping Dietrich at her most dramatically despairing for “Never Again,” or summoning Elaine Stritch’s blunt force in a showstopping romp through “Why Do the Wrong People Travel?”
Ross’s gentler singing underlines the more tender emotions and sense of ennui embedded in the songs, though he also has a wicked good time with the mercilessly, hilariously biting “Mrs. Worthington,” and delivers critiques of storied figures such as Mary Martin and Edna Ferber with acerbic gusto. (In an opening flourish that suggests what Time Magazine once called Coward’s “combination of cheek and chic,” Ross stands on stage prior to Sullivan’s entrance, checking his watch as casually as James Bond would while engaging a lover or villain.) The plummy British accent Ross adopts to evoke Coward seems to fade in and out at points, but no matter; what Moore and her seasoned performers are going for is clearly more celebration than impersonation.
Towards that end, Ross and Sullivan establish an infectious rapport, no doubt rooted in their decades of working in a demanding and increasingly endangered genre, but also reflective of their shared and deep admiration for the particular material and history represented here. When Sullivan asks Ross, in his guise as Coward, how he found the time to write so many letters, he responds, “We weren’t twittering and tweeting and emailing and Facebooking…I’d like to think some of the things we wrote will still be around when the last email has been deleted.”
Certainly, time—and theater and cabaret fans, especially—won’t soon forget the multi-hyphenate described in Love, Noël as “a Renaissance Man who just happened to live in the 20th century.”
Love, Noël opened August 25, 2019, at the Irish Repertory Theatre and runs through August 25. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
