Present Laughter (Audio Theatre Series)

Rating:
Summary: Another winner
Review: Another winner from the folks at L.A. Theatre Works who bring together all-star casts to brilliantly perform plays from all genres. You can hear the actors having fun with the material.

Rating:
Summary: His most revealing?
Review: Garry Essendine, the hero of PRESENT LAUGHTER, is almost transparently Coward's idea of himself as the complete theater man whose life depends, in a odd twist of dependency itself, on the loyalty and cooperation of a vast staff of employees, most of whom know better than he what he is like and what he needs to go on. These include Monica Reed, his beautiful, devoted secretary who sees right through him llike Bette Davis seeing through Sheridan Whiteside in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER. Then there is Liz, Garry's wife who left him but never managed to divorce him, which allows him to play loose with all the young ladies who have fallen for their aging matinee idol.

In Coward's case, the reason he needed a bulwark to fend off young female admirers is because he was gay, and in PRESENT LAUGHTER, the characterization of the young pretentious playwright Ronald Maule, who becomes a slave to garry Essendine through a bit of ill-advised personal contact, is surprisingly frank for its day (wartime UK). The whole play is filled with Coward's trademark dialogue, as Garry is constantly false and hilariously hysterical, while all the other characters continually deflate him with their loving barbs. If it is not Coward's best play, then I don't know what is.