Noel Coward's plays epitomize the sophisticated wit of the era between the two world wars, and Hay Fever, a comedy of manners about a family whose theatrical excesses torment a group of unsuspecting visitors, epitomizes the Coward play. Inspired by a weekend he spent at the house of the actor Laurette Taylor, Coward wrote the play in just three days. Upon its 1925 London debut on August 6, it won praise from both audiences and critics. Considered by many to be cleverly constructed, wittily written, slightly cynical, and undeniably entertaining, the work contains all the elements that would help establish Coward's reputation as a playwright. With Ace of Clubs (1949) Coward sought to be up-to-date, with the setting of a contemporary Soho nightclub. It did better than its three predecessors, running for 211 performances, but Coward wrote, "I am furious about Ace of Clubs not being a real smash and I have come to the conclusion that if they don't care for first rate music, lyrics, dialogue and performance they can stuff it up their collective arses and go and see [Ivor Novello's] King's Rhapsody". [177] He reverted, without success, to a romantic historical setting for After the Ball (1954 – 188 performances). His last two musicals were premiered on Broadway rather than in London. Sail Away (1961) with a setting on a modern cruise ship ran for 167 performances in New York and then 252 in London. [178] For his last and least successful musical, Coward reverted to Ruritanian royalty in The Girl Who Came to Supper (1963), which closed after 112 performances in New York and has never been staged in London. [179] Other Coward works produced in the mid-to-late 1920s included the plays Easy Virtue (1926), a drama about a divorcée's clash with her snobbish in-laws; The Queen Was in the Parlour, a Ruritanian romance; This Was a Man (1926), a comedy about adulterous aristocrats; The Marquise (1927), an eighteenth-century costume drama; Home Chat (1927), a comedy about a married woman's fidelity; and the revues On with the Dance (1925) and This Year of Grace (1928). None of these shows has entered the regular repertoire, but the last introduced one of Coward's best-known songs, "A Room with a View". [54] His biggest failure in this period was the play Sirocco (1927), which concerns free love among the wealthy. It starred Ivor Novello, of whom Coward said, "the two most beautiful things in the world are Ivor's profile and my mind". [55] Theatregoers hated the play, showing violent disapproval at the curtain calls and spitting at Coward as he left the theatre. [56] Coward later said of this flop, "My first instinct was to leave England immediately, but this seemed too craven a move, and also too gratifying to my enemies, whose numbers had by then swollen in our minds to practically the entire population of the British Isles." [57] The play portrays the chance meeting, subsequent love affair, and eventual parting of a married woman and a physician.

Mander, Raymond; Joe Mitchenson (2000) [1957]. Theatrical Companion to Coward. Barry Day and Sheridan Morley (2000 edition, ed.) (seconded.). London: Oberon Books. ISBN 978-1-84002-054-0. All that does mean that even though you are the most successful person in the world, you never rest easy," posits Thompson. "I think he felt like an outsider more or less his whole life." Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2004, accessed 30 December 2008: requires subscription; and Noel Coward at the IMDB database, accessed 12 March 2009By the end of the 1960s, Coward developed arteriosclerosis and, during the run of Suite in Three Keys, he struggled with bouts of memory loss. [113] This also affected his work in The Italian Job, and he retired from acting immediately afterwards. [114] Coward was knighted in 1970, [115] and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. [116] He received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 1970. [117] In 1972, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Sussex. [118] The play covers a 20-year period from June 1919, when the Gibbons family move into their new home near London's Clapham Common, to when they move out in June 1939. One day ... a little advertisement appeared in the Daily Mirror.... It stated that a talented boy of attractive appearance was required by a Miss Lila Field to appear in her production of an all-children fairy play: The Goldfish. This seemed to dispose of all argument. I was a talented boy, God knows, and, when washed and smarmed down a bit, passably attractive. There appeared to be no earthly reason why Miss Lila Field shouldn't jump at me, and we both believed that she would be a fool indeed to miss such a magnificent opportunity. [9] Coward (left) with Lydia Bilbrook and Charles Hawtrey, 1911

In 1920, at the age of 20, Coward starred in his own play, the light comedy I'll Leave It to You. After a three-week run in Manchester it opened in London at the New Theatre (renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in 2006), his first full-length play in the West End. [27] Neville Cardus's praise in The Manchester Guardian was grudging. [28] Notices for the London production were mixed, but encouraging. [29] The Observer commented, "Mr Coward... has a sense of comedy, and if he can overcome a tendency to smartness, he will probably produce a good play one of these days." [30] The Times, on the other hand, was enthusiastic: "It is a remarkable piece of work from so young a head – spontaneous, light, and always 'brainy'." [31] Coward in The Knight of the Burning Pestle in 1920 In Blithe Spirit, Coward played a middle-aged novelist accused of "nauseating" flippancy. It may have been a savage self-portrait – and his next role, a self-obsessed, egotistical actor in Present Laughter in 1942, was certainly the height of Coward-sending-up-Coward.The play was broadcast on radio in 1937 in both the US ( CBS Radio) and Britain ( BBC radio, with Marie Tempest in her original stage role.) [31] In later BBC radio adaptations, Judith has been played by Athene Seyler (1952), Peggy Ashcroft (1971), and Judi Dench (1993). [67]