Plays - Nol Coward

The third volume of Coward's plays contains some of his best work fromthe thirties.

Design for Living- is about a triangular alliancebetween two men and a woman, based on friends of Coward's, which hewaited to write "until she and he and I had arrived by different roadsin our careers at a time and a place when we felt we could all threeplay together with a more or less equal degree of success." Cavalcadewas Coward's most ambitious stage project, set during the Boer War,which cost 30,000 in its day and which includes scenes of the reliefof the sinking of the Titanic and the coming of the Jazz Age. Conversation Piece is a musical comedy that Nol wrote for the Parisianstar Yvonne Printemps and includes the song "I'll Follow My SecretHeart".

Also in the volume are three short plays including Tonight at 8.30 -Hands Across the Sea, a gentle satire of colonials and London Society;Still Life which became the film Brief Encounterand Fumed Oaka suburbancomedy about a 'worm who turns'. The volume is introduced by SheridanMorley.