Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre by Russell Jackson, and: Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward by Oliver Soden (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre by Russell Jackson, and: Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward by Oliver Soden
• Laura Milburn (bio)

Russell Jackson, Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022. Pp 232. Hardcover $115.00 and Oliver Soden, Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2023. Pp 656. Hardcover £30

There is already a large canon of literature (of varying quality and accuracy) regarding Noël Coward's life and work, including volumes written by Coward himself. Therefore, in order to justify penning yet another volume about "The Master," an author needs to find a new angle. Reading Russell Jackson's Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre and Oliver Soden's latest biography Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward, it is clear that they have both succeeded in doing so.

Jackson's and Soden's respective books differ in their approach and target demographic, but what they both have in common is their extensive use of archival research. Both have thoroughly researched the main Coward archives, which are currently divided between London (where they are administered by the Noël Coward Archive Trust) and the Noël Coward Collection at the University of Birmingham's Cadbury Research Library. It is the usage of the vast archival material that makes both books stand out and will ensure they are considered the primers for any scholar or theatre enthusiast going forward, and both gentlemen are very clear from the outset on the importance of the archival materials and what we can learn from them. At the start of his book, Jackson notes "the archive's script material, especially in the earliest manuscript drafts, conveys the impression of a playwright who is also an actor and director, seeing characters decisively from the outset, hearing the lines as he writes them and already directing the play in the theatre of his mind" (2).

Nevertheless, it is somewhat disappointing to see that the American archives have not been considered or consulted, with the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library in particular holding a substantial collection on Coward's theatrical career. For Noël Coward: The Playwright's Craft in a Changing Theatre, it is of less importance because Jackson's objective is to chart the development of Coward's writing methods, so the manuscripts, unpublished letters and diaries which are stored in the UK archives are of greater relevance and on which Jackson has based his study. It would have been interesting to read Soden's interpretation and discussion of the American theatrical reviews (specifically those found in the 'Collection of newspaper clippings of dramatic criticism' [*ZAN-*T282] at the NYPL) in Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward, but this new biography was largely a Covid-19 lockdown project. This, of course, meant that access to [End Page 266] all archives were heavily restricted for twelve months and travel to the USA was prohibited for even longer, so consideration must be given to the practicalities and meeting the deadline for publication to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Coward's death (and the start of a two-year celebration, named #Coward125 by the Noël Coward Estate, marking this anniversary and also the 125th birthday of Coward in 2024).

Coward's manuscripts are central to Jackson's argument that Coward was a "stickler for detail" (185) and "a tireless and enterprising worker" (185). Indeed, the study does give a "vivid sense of looking over the shoulder of an author who, above all, despite any setbacks before or during production, enjoyed exercising his craft as a playwright" (186). Jackson's study is arguably the first to provide the level of dramaturgical analysis and certainly the first to draw extensively on unpublished archive material. His approach is meticulous—he begins by providing an overview of Coward's career and the reception of his plays before offering a discussion on selected texts, working through Coward's career chronologically by decade from the 1920s through to the 1960s. As expected, The Vortex, Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for...