Noel Coward by Robert F. Kiernan, and: Noel Coward by Frances Gray (review)

Book Reviews ''Truth'' and "reality" are staged, they are perfonnance texts compiled from a vast network oftexts/assertions about truth and reality. In the later works this same theatrical metaphor is applied to texts (i.e. , contexts for which we have interpretive models) that we draw on as part of our present rather than lhose we have inherited as our literary and cultural past. But only in the later plays do we see that it is not the truth or untruth of what is presented (there is no absolute truth), but rather the possibility of controlling the staging apparatus that is all important. History re~enters Stoppard's work not as asystem ofgenerally valid socia-linguistic meanings or events, but as the recognition that power arises from knowledge ofthe staging mechanisms themselves. This demonstration ofthe connection between power and the directorial imperative may well be the crucial element of Stoppard's postmodem vision. Thus, Stoppard's late work, while it does not suggest that the individual can be certain of the correctness of his or her beliefs or actions, demonstrates that, in the face of a structure or system that disempowers by claiming the right to stage truth or meaning, one is always free, as in the case of Every Good Boy, to "orchestrate" an alternative that, although it offers neither a more certain truth, nor the guarantee of liberty, denies the authority of all monolithic interpretations (dramatic or otherwise). It also allows one to speak without naively believing in the texts and meanings from which one has borrowed in order to speak. Neumeier, who cites Umberto Eco along these lines, should have thought more about this notion as she was writing her book. Then it might have been less reductive and, perhaps, more playful in its approach to Stoppard's critical theoretical position. MICHAEL HAYS, CORNELL UNIVERSITY ROBERT F. KIERNAN. Noel Coward. New York: Ungar 1986. Pp. xiv, 183. $15.95. FRANCES GRAY. Noel Coward. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1987. Pp. viii, 216, illus. £18.00; £5.95 (PB). "I think on the whole I am a better writer than I am given credit for being," Noel Coward once wrote in his diary. Certainly his career as a popular light comic actor and his flamboyantly theatrical life occasionally obscured the often swprising depth and diversity of his writing. Although he was also a short story writer, novelist, and poet, as wen as a prolific diarist, Coward was essentially a man of the theatre. He produced, directed, and acted with precise technical proficiency and occasional genius, but it is his work as a playwright that remains his lasting contribution to the modem stage. His straight plays encompass every genre, from melodramas to farcical comedies, with an emphasis on the elegant drawing-room comedies for which he is best remembered. Two recent books, Robert F. Kiernan's Noel Coward for Ungar's "Literature and Life: British Writers" series and Frances Gray's Noel Coward for Macmillan's "Modem Dramatists" series, attempt the daunting task ofassessing Coward's work as a dramatist, but the central flaw of both studies is that they only cover Coward's straight plays. Book Reviews 597 Kiernan's work includes a brief survey of Coward's most memorable lyrics and both books make occasional references to Coward's musical works, although both fundamentally focus on the major plays, beginning with Coward's fJrSt important drama, The Vortex, in 1924. and conduding with three one-act plays intended as a vehicle for his acting swan-song, Suite in Three Keys. in 1966. Despite the diversity and often autobiographical nature of his plays, Coward's musical works (including operettas, revues, and musical comedies), for which he generally contributed music, lyrics, and libretto, as well as his short stories, several of which have been recently and impressively dramatized for television, reveal as much about Coward's style, wit, and more than occasional depth of feeling as his better known and more often produced plays. These studies have many similarities in scope: Kiernan's solid, rather pedestrian, survey tends toward biographical detail, while Gray aims for, and achieves, a deeper analysis of the plays and the theatrical milieu in which they...