Coward on the Coast: eNewsletter                                                     June 12, 2015 
In This Issue
Barry Creyton wins 2014 Coward Writing Prize
Fallen Angels at TheatreWorks, Mountain View
Coward Festival at Stanford University
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Coming to the
U. S. West Coast

2015
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Coward Cabaret

August 13-23, 2015
Stanford Repertory Theater
 Nitery Theater
Old Union (Lausen Mall)
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
650-725-5838
Directed by Brendon Martin
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Fallen Angels

June 3-28, 2015
TheatreWorks
Mountain View Center
500 Castro St
Mountain View, CA 94041
650-463-1960
Directed by Robert Kelley
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Hay Fever

July 16 - Aug 9, 2015
Stanford Repertory Theater
 Pigott Theater
 Memorial Auditorium
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
650-725-5838
Directed by Lynne Soffer


Sept 23 - Nov 8, 2015
Cygnet Theatre
Old Town Theatre
4040 Twiggs St
San Diego, CA 92110
619-337-1525
Directed by Rob Lutfy

in Repertory with The Vortex
 
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Present Laughter

Nov 6 - Dec 13, 2015
Lakewood Center for the Arts
368 S. State St
Lake Oswego, OR 97034
503-635-3901
 Directed by Don Alder

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Private Lives 

Jun 12 - July 18, 2015
Little Fish Theatre
777 S. Centre St
San Pedro, CA 90731
310-512-6030
 Directed by James Rice

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The Vortex
in Repertory with Hay Fever

Sept 24 - Nov 8, 2015
Cygnet Theatre
Old Town Theatre
4040 Twiggs St 
San Diego, CA 92110
619-337-1525 
Directed by Sean Murray     
 Quick Links
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Summer When It Sizzles

Barry Creyton Receives Coward Writing Award
Sometimes news takes a while to travel "across the Pond" -- it's never too late to cheer. Congratulations to NCS member, Los Angelino Barry Creyton for winning the Coward Writing Award, presented in June 2014 at a ceremony in London. 
 

Fallen Angels is the darling of SF Bay Area Critics. Running June 3-28, this production is presented by TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.

  

No�l Coward Festival.  No�l Coward: Art, Style, and Decadence

Stanford Repertory Theater (SRT) and Stanford University Theater & Performance Studies (TAPS) present a host of Coward-related events during summer session, June 24-August 23, 2015, on the Stanford campus.

 

This Festival begins in two weeks, so I'm re-running the article from May, listing Festival events, times, and web links.   Tickets are on sale now for Festival events. 

 

More on the Coast This Summer...

  • Opens Friday: Private Lives at the Little Fish Theatre, San Pedro, CA.  June 12-July18.

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Got news? I always enjoy hearing from you: please send me info on  Coward-related events and shows on the U.S. west coast.

Barry Creyton
"In His Own Write" Award Winner in 2014
International No�l Coward Society Writing Competition

Barry Creyton
In the first Coward writing competition since an essay competition in 1932, California NCS member Barry Creyton was awarded the �1,000 prize for his parody, Private Wives, a sketch written originally for his Austrailian television show in the 1980's.  On behalf of the Coward Society, Stephan Duckham presented the award to Creyton in June 2014.

With luck, Creyton will perform this delightful sketch sometime soon in the U.S.  In the meantime, here's the link to an audio recording of it on his web site; this version is from 1980's television, starring Creyton and the late June Salter:

Private Wives audio

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A Brief History of Private Wives 

by Barry Creyton  

 

In 1970, I met Coward at my doctor, Patrick Woodcock's fiftieth birthday party. I observed later that it was like meeting God - except that No�l Coward had a better sense of construction.

 

Patrick had told Coward of my admiration and respect for his work and in a long and warm discussion, we covered mutual friends, I picked his brain none too subtly about various aspects of his masterpiece PRIVATE LIVES and he picked mine about which of his numbers I'd performed in cabaret -- moreover, about the reaction to them.

 

PRIVATE LIVES has always seemed to me the perfect combination of wit, humor and emotional pain -- all integral to a perfectly constructed play. On the surface, a romp about a dysfunctional relationship, its wit frequently hides the characters' anguish in knowing that what's broken can never really be mended.

 

I admit to something of an obsession with the play ever since I first read it at age fifteen. That obsession was all but assassinated by the first production I saw at age twenty -- there was much posturing with cigarette holders and cocktail glasses, and in the romantic duologues, enough acting for a crowd scene. After many years, and many sightings of PRIVATE LIVES, good and bad, came the wonderfully realized Lindsay Duncan, Alan Rickman production which matched the vision of the play idealized in my fifteen year old reader's mind. 

 

My humble tributes to this great play have emerged in various forms: a sketch called REHEARSAL, written in 1965 for my first Australian comedy LP, in which two aging actors are directed in something like PRIVATE LIVES by a "method" director;  my play DOUBLE ACT, about a dysfunctional couple -- written in 1988 and performed in more than twenty languages since then -- and in the sketch, PRIVATE WIVES, which won me the 2014 No�l Coward Society award.

 

I wrote this for myself and the late June Salter for Australian television in the early 80s. Thereafter it appeared in several revues.  I revised it yet again for the New York revue SECRETS EVERY SMART TRAVELER SHOULD KNOW for which I wrote the spoken material.  It earned special praise in Variety and the New York Times.

 

NEW YORK TIMES

...One of the secrets of its success is its cheery salaciousness. Take the moment in Barry Creyton's spoof of Noel Coward's ''Private Lives,'' when Elyot Chase (James Darrah) reveals his new marital partner to be a man. As he and his ex-wife, Amanda Prynne (Liz McConahay), sip martinis and swap bon mots, he pours them fresh drinks and announces ''bottoms up,'' whereupon she retorts, ''I don't wish to hear the sordid details.'' 

 

VARIETY

There is a delicious sendup of "Private Lives" in Barry Creyton's "Private Wives," finding an archly passionate James Darrah and Liz McConahay as Noel Coward's divorcees honeymooning on the French Riviera with new mates. This time around, the urbane husband comes out of the closet.

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Actor, author, playwright, and director, Barry Creyton has worked extensively in British theatre and television, and in his native Australia where he's known nationally as a star of stage and television. In Los Angeles he's appeared in productions for LA Theatre Works, and the Antaeus Company.

He wrote the sketch material for the Off Broadway revue, Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know, which ran for two and a half years in New York.  In Los Angeles, his adaptation of No�l Coward's Peace In Our Time won the L.A. Weekly Annual Theatre Award and the Ovation Award, while in his native Australia, he received the prestigious Kessell Memorial Award for his outstanding contributions to Australian theatre as actor, playwright and director.

His plays are produced in more than twenty languages, and his novels are published by Random House. He directs multi-cast audio productions including his adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and The Tempest for Blackstone Audio, and Cyrano de Bergerac for LA Theatreworks.

In 2014, NCS member Creyton received the international No�l Coward Society Writing Award for his parody sketch, Private Wives.

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Fallen Angels
TheatreWorks
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts
Mountain View, CA
June 3 - 28, 2015
Fallen Angels
Fallen Angels 2015 Directed by Robert Kelley

TheatreWorks

Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts - Main Stage

500 Castro Street

Mountain View, CA 94041
    

TheatreWorks Box Office 

650-463-1960
Mon-Fri    11 am - 6 pm 

Sat-Sun   12-6 pm 

 

Mountain View Center Box Office
650-903-6000
Phone or Walk-up: Wed-Sat, 12 pm-6 pm
 
Tickets: $25 -$74

Performances
Tues - Weds          7:30 pm
Weds, June 24       2:00 pm
 
Sat & Sun             2:00 pm
Thurs - Sat           8:00 pm
Sun                      7:00 pm (except June 28)
 
Post-show discussions on Weds: June 10, 17, and 24 

 

Check out the YouTube video: TWorks Fallen Angels on YouTube 

 

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Critics Love Fallen Angels
Chad Jones of the San Francisco Chronicle writes:

... "downright delightful! If Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz had been born into London's upper crust, they might have resembled Julia (Sarah Overman) and Jane (Rebecca Dines)."

  

Slideshow from TheatreWorks

To view a slideshow of production photos:

 

1. Go to the TheaterWorks web page for Fallen Angels:

 http://www.theatreworks.org/shows/1415-season/fallenangels  

 

 2. On the Fallen Angels web page, click on the image:   

 

 

Note: Each slide stays on the screen for about 4 seconds.  

 

 For more information, see:   Fallen Angels web page  

 

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No�l Coward Festival 
Stanford University Theater & Performance Studies (TAPS) and
Stanford Repertory Theater (SRT)
Stanford, CA 94305
June 24 - August 23, 2015
No�l Coward Festival
No�l Coward: Art, Style, and Decadence

Stanford University

Stanford, CA 94305 

  
Stanford Repertory Theater (SRT) presents its 17th annual summer festival, this year celebrating the work of No�l Coward. 

The festival includes two productions, Hay Fever and a Coward Cabaret; a free film series on Monday nights, screening seven of Coward's films;  a full-day symposium with Coward specialists as speakers (including keynote speaker, John Lahr, and theater director, Art Manke); and a six-week theater course as part of Stanford Continuing Studies.

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Live Performances
  
Hay Fever
Courtney Walsh
 

Directed by Lynne Soffer

  

Stanford Repertory Theater
Pigott Theater, Memorial Auditorium

Memorial Way

Stanford Campus  

  

Tickets: $15-$25  

 

July 16 - August 9, 2015  

Thurs - Sat    8:00 pm

Sunday          2:00 pm

  

Hay Fever stars SRT company artist Courtney Walsh as Judith Bliss, and features Deborah Fink as Myra Arundel, Richard Carlton as David Bliss, Rush Rehm as Richard Greatham, and Catharine Luedtke as Clara.

Coward Cabaret

Directed by Brendon Martin


Stanford Repertory Theater

Nitery Theater, Old Union  

Lasuen Mall

Stanford Campus

  

Tickets: $10-$15 

  

August 13 - 23, 2015 

Thurs - Sat    8:00 pm

Sunday          2:00 pm

 

Starring Dante Belletti, Kiki Bagger, Andre Amarotico, and Samantha Williams

 

For both shows, ticket purchases via credit card will be available online, beginning June 1, 2015. Tickets may also be reserved via mail (no credit cards, just checks), beginning June 1.   See:

   

Box Office / Ticket information

 

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Monday Night Film Series 

No�l Coward on Film cavalcade poster  

CEMEX Auditorium 

641 Knight Way

Stanford Campus 

  

This series focuses on Coward's work as screenwriter, actor, and director.  Films in the  series are:   

  

Private Lives (1931), Cavalcade (1933),
Brief Encounter (1945), In Which We Serve (1942),
Our Man in Havana
(1959), Blithe Spirit (1945), and Bunny Lake is Missing (1965). 
 
Stanford faculty and SRT company members will introduce each film and lead a post-screening discussion. For each film, patrons will receive a free filmography, prepared by SRT's Roselyn Hallett.  

June 29 - August 10, 2015

Mondays, 7:00 pm (no admission after 7:15 pm)


Free admission

 

For more details, see:  Coward on Film web page   

 

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Symposium  

Art, Style, and Decadence in the Work of No�l Coward 

 

Pigott Theater, Memorial Auditorium  

Memorial Way

Stanford Campus

 

Saturday August 1, 2015 9:30 am to 5 pm
$90 (including luncheon)   

 

SRT presents "a daylong community symposium on Coward and his remarkable fusion of art, style, and decadence, with lots of laughter and a dollop of disillusionment thrown in for good measure!" 

  

Symposium web page  

  

John Lahr, Coward biographer and theater critic for the New Yorker magazine, will deliver the symposium keynote address.  

  

Other symposium speakers include theater director Art Manke, Stanford Professors William Eddelman and Nicholas Jenkins, SRT artistic director Rush Rehm, and members of the SRT company, including Lynne Soffer (director of SRT's Hay Fever), Brendon Martin (director of SRT's Coward Cabaret), and Courtney Walsh (who plays Judith Bliss in Hay Fever).      

  

For more information, contact: [email protected]  


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Stanford Continuing Studies
Theater on Theater: From Euripides' Bacchae to No�l Coward and Beyond
Professor Rush Rehm

Registration opens on 05/18/2015 

Tuition: $310

 

Taught by Rush Rehm, Professor of Theater and Performance Studies and of Classics, and the founder and Artistic Director of Stanford Repertory Theater, this course explores the "play within the play" and  includes special preview performances of the two SRT productions, plus Monday-night films and the Symposium.

 

Classes          Weds  June 24 - August 12     7:00 pm - 8:50 pm

Previews        Weds  July 15  + August 12    

Movies           Mon    June 29 - August 10     7:00 pm

Symposium    Sat     August 1                      9:30 am - 5:00 pm  

 

For the course description and to apply online for admission, see:  

Stanford Continuing Studies Course

  

FYI. Admissions requirements   

Admission is discretionary. The Stanford Continuing Studies Program requires students to hold a high school diploma or its equivalent. Students are not matriculated Stanford University students, and not all University privileges apply to Continuing Studies students. The University reserves the right, at its discretion, to withhold registration from, or require withdrawal from the program of, any student or applicant.

 

For more information, see: 

Stanford TAPS Theater + Performance Studies 

 
Rush Rehm received a PhD in drama and humanities from Stanford, and has written several books on Greek tragedy, including The Play of Space and Radical Theatre: Greek Tragedy and the Modern World. He recently directed Stanford Repertory Theater's productions of Moby-Dick-Rehearsed and The War of the Worlds.
 

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Cheers,

Kathy Williams
U.S. West Coast Liaison
The No�l Coward Society