Noël Coward’s plays don’t often interest American actors or audiences, so why am I including it here? Because actors need to understand what life was like when when plays were written, and because the secrets behind the lines of Chekhov are too boring for most actors. Most people reading this may want to rush away and find a more interesting page here, but if you can put up with seeing some rather silly DETAILS in a few lines it may help them to manage many comedies of today.
When Coward’s plays were written, 1925 to 1960, there was one quality in most characters of many British plays and films, a quality which modern actors can act quite easily, – if they try to look for it – of making their character very polite! Having ‘good manners’ is a clever – and a funny – way to hide a character’s true feelings.
If we see what is behind the simple lines of Coward’s plays, we may also see what could be between the lines of modern comedies by Mamet, Neil Simon, Michael Frayn, and countless tv series and films. Just by adding ‘good manners’!
In the tv series FRIENDS, a character will propose marriage and – just a second change his or her mind. Why do we believe the character? What he is saying is ridiculous, so why do we believe the actor switching so quickly, and why does it make the audience laugh? It is not that the actor makes his character look tired or nervous, – because that wouldn’t be funny at all! It is that the character remembers in a second that if they any anything at all in a kind, polite way, it will not seem rude to instantly change their mind about a marriage proposal! They may seem mad, but they are – just – believable!
Here is a scene of ten lines which seems to be about nothing important, but there are ten reasons in it why actors who understand what is behind the lines will make an audience listening and getting ready to laugh.
This scene from his play HAY FEVER, seems only to have CLARA, a housekeeper, entering a room to open a front door, and complaining briefly about her job as she passes three people sat on the floor. But each line hides the fact that the characters all have something else on their minds.
The housekeeper, CLARA, enters the living-room because the door-bell has just rung, so the actor playing her can appear – for a moment – to be perfectly happy. She then passes JUDITH, her employer, who is sat on the floor with her teenage daughter and son, all three of whom are each waiting for a guest to arrive for the weekend. We soon learn that JUDITH’s husband, who is in another room, has also invited a guest to stay.
CLARA is half-way across the room when she is stopped by JUDITH’S first line, which it is clear that JUDITH is warning CLARA about the visitors for the first time.
JUDITH, the mother of the two teenagers and employer of CLARA, must not sound unkind when she gives the bad news to CLARA, because unkindness does not ‘fit’ into comedy. Bad manners are not funny! So the actor playing JUDITH has to give CLARA the news calmly, while knowing that CLARA won’t be pleased.
CLARA obviously has reason not to be pleased, for she will have to cook and prepare four rooms in four minutes! So the situation could become tense very quickly, and there have only been two lines!
JUDITH: Clara – before you open the door, – we shall be eight for dinner.
CLARA: My God!
SIMON: (Judith’s son) And for breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner tomorrow.
JUDITH: (to Clara) Will you get various rooms ready?
CLARA: I shall have to.
SOREL: (Judith’s daughter) Now we’ve upset Clara!
JUDITH: It can’t be helped – nothing can be helped. It’s Fate. Everything that happens is fate. That’s always been a great comfort for me.
CLARA: More like arrant selfishness.
JUDITH: You mustn’t be pert, Clara.
CLARA: Pert I may be, but I ‘ave got some thought for others. Eight for dinner – Amy going home early! It’s nothing more or less than an imposition.
(Doorbell rings again)
SIMON: Hadn’t you better let them in?
If the actors playing JUDITH’s children show no surprise when their Mother gives CLARA the bad news, by not even looking up at CLARA with some sympathy, then the audience already knows that they all knew about four guests being about to arrive. But the actors playing the daughter and son can feel a bit uncomfortable! The following lines show that JUDITH, both her children, the housekeeper, and Judith’s husband – who is not even there, (and, possibly, the four guests as well, who may be waiting, and are, outside the front door,) all eight of them will be seen in ten seconds that each of them thinks that he or she is only important person in the house! It is funny because the audience soon knows that there are likely to be explosions in the next scenes.
So problems can be expected.
JUDITH’s next line, starting “It can’t be helped – ” has very odd language, and the audience will guess that she is quoting from another play, because they have learned – in a previous scene – that JUDITH has ben a quite successful professional actor. So JUDITH says the line dramatically, (and only this one line, because if she says all her lines like a diva she will be boring,) and this simple line makes it clear that she loves to ‘perform’.
The language is careful, so the family is clearly well-educated, and middle-class, so an audience might already feel they are watching a ‘family’ play like some of Oscar Wilde, Shaw, and Tom Stoppard, where characters also pretend to have good manners. But the audience will feel for a moment – that JUDITH has been rude to her housekeeper by only telling her about the four guests at the last minute, and rudeness has no place in comedy. It isn’t funny. It can’t be the right way to say the line!
In fact JUDITH has only just found out about the four guests herself, so has had had no chance to warn CLARA until now, and the audience will need a reason for JUDITH not giving CLARA the news more gently.
And, surprisingly, CLARA replies to JUDITH in the same rather sharp tone, so the an employer and a housekeeper are speaking to each other like equals! All we know, for now, is that neither of them minds the way other talks, and when the play continues we learn that during JUDITH’s long career as an actor she has had CLARA as her ‘dresser’, – probably helping JUDITH through frequent disasters backstage, – so the two have become more like ‘stage-sisters’ than employer and employee, which allows CLARA sometimes to speak as if she is in charge.
And CLARA has another reason for being ‘sharp’ with JUDITH, which she explains in this scene’s final line, that CLARA’s assistant – ‘Amy’ – who sometimes helps in the kitchen, has not come to work today, claiming to have a cold. This means that CLARA will have to do all the extra work on her own, and she may also be annoyed because Judith or her children could have answered the doorbell themselves!
So, after the first three lines, there is some tension building.
Americans who remember the wonderful actor Conchata Ferell, playing the bossy Housekeeper in the tv series TWO AND A HALF MEN , will know a character very similar to CLARA. Ms Ferell’s character was ‘got away’ with being rude to her employer, played by Charlie Sheen, because she was old enough to be his mother, but CLARA is the same age as JUDITH, and the audience now guesses that CLARA and JUDITH have been like together for some years, and when they learn that Clara was Judith’s assistant backstage, a British audience will remember the tradition in UK theatre that actors and their ‘dressers’ often have a mutual respect.
Then SIMON, Judith’s innocent-looking son, adds to the tension by gently throwing in the news that the guests will stay for the whole weekend. He does not mean to upset CLARA, he just thinks it is best to give her all the bad news at the same time, so he is not being unkind, (and unkindness has no place in comedy, unless it is explained), but he simply feels in charge because he has told Clara the main news, and because he is the only male in the room ! Remember the play was written in 1924 when all males thought they had extra powers.
However, CLARA, the housekeeper, out-ranks SIMON because of her age, and JUDITH fears CLARA may now explode, so tries to take charge by asking CLARA “Will you get various rooms ready?”– slipping in the word ”various” as if the number of rooms could be a number which CLARA fishes out of the air! This could seem unkind of JUDITH so the actor playing her must try to sound humorous about it. CLARA does not laugh.
The speed of the dialogue in the tv series FRIENDS is a modern example of how every attitude has to be worked out so that none of the characters is ever upset for more than half a second, never given time to realize if they have been insulted, – despite 50% of the lines in most episodes of FRIENDS including an insult, – and the actors in FRIENDS must have studied their lines day and night to keep up the goodwill which the characters all share.
If JUDITH were American she might not worry what her housekeeper thinks, or notice that her son has just made things worse, but this is the UK, and the actor playing CLARA has the choice of returning Judith’s attempt at humor, by rebuking Judith’s slight thoughtlessness with wit of her own, and she replies, “I shall have to – they can’t sleep in the passage”. So CLARA’s line is not serious.
CLARA is pointing out that all this has happened before, – and that without her help the guests actually might all end up on the floor, so the actor playing CLARA needs to include in her ‘Subtext’ (see a video with that title on Free Videos page), a new feeling of relaxing because she can guess how many times this actually has nearly happened.
Neither JUDITH nor her son comment on CLARA’s rebuke, and possibly manage a smile as if everything is going well, that then encourages SOREL, Judith’s daughter, to jump in, criticizing what she thought was her mother’s rudeness, with – “Now we’ve upset Clara!”, as if CLARA were no longer present, unable to speak for herself , and allowing SOREL, for a moment, to be in charge!
Each of them wants to rule the roost. So we can also guess that they won’t go to much trouble looking after their four guests! And at this point JUDITH recovers from hertries to regain everyone’s attention with another dramatic line from another play she has performed in the past:
– “It can’t be helped – nothing can be helped. It’s Fate. Everything that happens is Fate. That’s always been a great comfort to me.”
The audience may believe, for a moment, that Judith is genuinely upset, but the audience will realize that JUDITH is only ‘putting on an act’ because the children show no interest, and possibly applaud at the end of her line! The actor playing JUDITH has suddenly, out of nowhere, tried to appear like Shakespeare’s CLEOPATRA.
And – inside their heads – each of the family may be desperately hoping that their guests will soon be giving them full attention.
The housekeeper, Clara, knows that Judith has been ‘acting’, and replies – equally pompously – “More like arrant selfishness.” and CLARA may say her own line like a Diva, but JUDITH does not mind that CLARA rebukes her, what she dislikes is that CLARA has tried to upstage her with a better performance! JUDITH’s line “You mustn’t be pert” is not calling CLARA rude, it is suggesting that CLARA’s diva performance was not very good !
CLARA wants the last word, and slips in: “Pert I may be, but I ‘ave got some thought for others. Eight for dinner – Amy going home early! It’s nothing more or less than an imposition”. But CLARA cannot match the authority of Judith’s drama, and sounds like a Cockney version of Mrs Malaprop * , for she has probably learned words like “imposition” and “pert” from Judith, and may not really know what they mean !
CLARA tries to think of a biting reply, but is interrupted by the doorbell.
*(The eccentric character in Sheridan’s play THE RIVALS.)
The doorbell gives SIMON a last chance to try his ‘Lord-of-the-manor’ arrogance, by suggesting – “ Hadn’t you better let them in?”
CLARA marches briskly to the front door, as if she had been about to do so anyway, not because of Simon’s suggestion, but because she wants to get back to her kitchen where she can take charge. And she may now swing the front door open abruptly to reveal the first guest, and turn away allowing the door to close before the guest can enter!
In eleven lines the playwright establishes the tension before a family’s guests arrive, that Judith is sometimes a Diva, that the Housekeeper is her friend, and that her children are selfish, so the audience is prepared to see the four guests get a rough weekend before they even arrive . A weekend’s journey to hell has begun.
Cowards plays do not have the depths of Chekhov, whose plays involve a more horrible background than the stupidity of the British middle-class. But in good translations Chekhov’s characters can be seen to be just as selfish and even as stupid as those of Coward. Russians who have seen good productions of Chekhov call most of his plays comedies, because they see that, as in Coward, there is a war going on between all the lines. A war guys!
Choosing monologues from Coward’s plays only needs careful study, maybe combining several short speeches in which a character contradicts themself. I’ve only seen it done at once out of hundreds of drama school auditions, but it could impress if done well, by beginners or a veteran, simply showing the light dialogue which has become famous again in tv series like SUITS.
John Windsor-Cunningham, April, 2024.
