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Quality Hill Playhouse opens its season with the delightful and often poignant Noël and Gertie, a dramatization of the long collaboration and friendship of theatrical royalty: Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence. Created by Sheridan Morley, the play uses scenes from many of Coward’s plays in which he stared with Lawrence as well as 18 to 20 of his songs, some familiar and others less so. As we observe the evolution and development of their art, we also observe the depth and breadth of their personal relationship, one in which each was an inspiration as well as prop for the other. This production is a reprise at the Playhouse with the same cast and director as in 1998. Linda Ade Brand returns with her skillful direction of Robert Gibby Brand as Noël Coward and Melinda MacDonald as Gertrude Lawrence with Jeremy Watson at the piano.

One wishes for a box of Coward’s own bon mots to speak of this stylish, sophisticated and aurally magnificent production. Robert Gibby Brand is a deft and amusing embodiment of Coward’s charm and urbanity, while MacDonald sparkles with all of Lawrence’s high, brittle sophistication and allure.

The musical is set in Coward’s memory sometime in the twenty years after Lawrence’s death in 1952, during her wildly successful run in The King and I. As he recounts their long association, Coward slips into the characters of their many shared performances. Using scenes from Private Lives, the frothy Blithe Spirit, and others, Noël and Gertie reminds us of the incredible talent and influence these two mythic figures wielded. Stars of an era before television and only upon the fringes of the burgeoning movie industry, they made their mark on the stage, with Coward also contributing significant additions to the arena of popular song.

Brand’s is a voice admirably suited to Coward’s material; he caresses a note with a practiced, polished tone. He delivers some truly stunning performances throughout, but especially in “I Travel Alone,” one of Coward’s little known songs. Yet he also crackles in crispy British pomposity with “Mrs. Worthington.”

As a figure in Coward’s memory, the quirky self-absorption of Gertrude Lawrence merely adds to her delightful charm, and MacDonald has a very delicate touch, skillfully creating a figure of warmth and humor, even as she becomes the “big, glamorous star—unscrupulous, gullible and lonely.” MacDonald produces some more than gorgeous singing in “Sail Away,” and their incredible duet of “I’ll See You Again,” leaves one breathless.

MacDonald and Brand are joined on stage by pianist Jeremy Watson, who collaborates with the singers in all of the best possible ways. He himself is a superb performer, fully aware of the emotional complexity in some of Coward’s music.

By interpolating Coward’s own work into his imagined Coward-Lawrence interactions, Morley probably did himself a disservice since his writing rarely meets the Coward challenge, and the shifts between the two are sometimes awkward, though Linda Ade Brand’s direction has smoothed out many of the edges. The audience is reminded rather forcefully of Coward’s versatility and skill in some of the best scenes from the nine short plays of Tonight at 8:30 like “Red Peppers,” where musical hall performers are clinging desperately to a medium quickly being replaced by moving pictures, and the stunning “Still Life,” eventually filmed itself as Brief Encounter.

Noël and Gertie is a romantic, nostalgic romp through an era quickly becoming more illusion than reality, a past that as William Faulkner said, “no winter ever quite touches.” The quicksilver personalities of Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence are more the stuff of legend now than history, and Noël and Gertie works its breezy magic over their tragic, funny, dramatic, complicated lives, leaving us a vision of mythic greatness.

REVIEW:
Quality Hill Playhouse 
Noël and Gertie
Run through October 23, 2011 (Reviewed Sunday, September 25)
Quality Hill Playhouse
303 West 10th St., Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-421-1700 or online at http://www.qualityhillplayhouse.com

By Sarah Young

Classical and Musical Theatre Contributor

Sarah Young is a freelance writer and performer in opera, theatre, choral and musical theatre. She has been seen locally with Wichita Grand Opera, Kansas City Symphony Chorus, Kansas City Civic Opera, Lawrence Community Theatre, Chestnut Fine Arts Center and in other local venues.  She studied voice at the University of Kansas, and has been trained in artist programs at Indiana University, Aspen Opera Theatre and the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.