Present Laughter

· L.A. Theatre Works · Narrated by Ian Ogilvy and Full Cast
Audiobook
36 min
Unabridged
Eligible
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About this audiobook

A gallery of friends, lovers, relatives and theatre acolytes sparkle around stage star Garry Essendine like bubbles in fine champagne. While Garry struggles to plan his upcoming trip to Africa, his elegant London flat is invaded by a love struck ingénue, an adulterous producer and a married seductress–not to mention Garry’s estranged wife Liz and the memorable Roland Maule, an aspiring playwright who is quite, quite mad.

"Present Laughter is a very light comedy and was written with the sensible object of providing me with a bravura part.”
Noël Coward

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Gregory Cooke, Arthur Hanket, Jon Matthews, Ian Oglivy, Siri O'Neal, Christina Pickles, Carolyn Seymour and Yeardley Smith.

About the author

In 1964, when Hay Fever (1925) was placed in the repertory of the newly organized National Theatre, Noel Coward professed to be grateful: "Bless you for admitting that I'm a classic." A week-long series of Coward played on BBC television in 1969; there have been major revivals in London and New York; plays long out of print have been republished in popular collections. At the start of the 1960s, though, Coward's reputation had been at an ebb, as he skirmished with the angry new drama. Coward had enjoyed no big success since Blithe Spirit of 1941. There have been attempts to assimilate the rehabilitated Coward to contemporary drama. Coward himself profited from the new freedom when, in 1965, his Song at Twilight discussed homosexuality, a subject that he had evaded throughout his career. A juvenile prodigy, Coward was by turns actor, director, composer, lyricist, autobiographer, and author of nearly 60 theater pieces. He even wrote screenplays, notably for In Which We Serve (1942) and Brief Encounter (1946). Although he specialized in light comedy, the so-called comedy of manners, he worked in many forms including patriotic spectacle, revue, musical, farce, even the problem play. Hay Fever, Blithe Spirit, and Private Lives (1930) have proved to be the most durable of his comedies, along with nine short plays presented as Tonight at 8:30. In each, characters demonstrate the combination of perpetual role playing, cool hedonism, and energizing self-absorption.

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