‘The Vortex’ cast visit the Coward Archive
On Friday 18th March, the cast of Hampstead’s Garden Suburb Theatre’s latest production The Vortex visited the Coward Room & Library to explore the archive ahead of their production in April.
NCAT’s Cultural Development Officer, Robert Hazle, met the group to give them a private tour round the collection and talk about The Vortex. The Archive holds original production photos, programmes and notebooks featuring early drafts of the play that launched Coward’s into fame and fortune.
Robert Hazle shows the group some highlights of the Coward Room
“After two auditions - the first back in 2020 - our production of The Vortex has finally got into rehearsal” director Colin Gregory tells us, “This production marks the return of The Vortex to Hampstead, following its first production in 1924 at the Everyman Theatre.”
But that is not the only direct connection to previous Coward productions, says Gregory:
“The production features a dressing gown formerly owned by our former President Sir Donald Sinden, who wore it as Garry Essendine in the 1981 West-end production of Noël Coward's Present Laughter.”
About The Vortex
The play premiered in November 1924, featuring Lilian Braithwaite as Florence and Coward himself as her son Nicky.
It is the story of a rich, ageing beauty, her troubled relationship with her adult son against the backdrop of drug abuse in British society circles after the First World War. The son's cocaine habit is seen by many critics as a metaphor for homosexuality, then taboo in Britain. Despite, or because of, its scandalous content for the time, the play was Coward's first great commercial success.
Colin Gregory again:
At the time, plays were subject to censorship then by the Lord Chamberlain and it scraped through only because Coward personally persuaded Lord Cromer (then Lord Chamberlain) that it was a "moral tract". It seems that even King George V had expressed his doubts, possibly justified since the critic Hannen Swaffer after seeing the first production described it as "the most decadent play of our time". Perhaps because of this it was a great success, touring the provinces, with John Gielgud understudying Coward's part, and opening on Broadway the following year.
If you would like to see the materials relating to The Vortex for yourself (or anything else at the Coward Archive), email cowardoffice@alanbrodie.com to book a time.
The Vortex will be performed by Garden Suburb Theatre at the King Alfred Phoenix Theatre 7th – 9th April 2022. For more information visit www.gardensuburbtheatre.org.uk and to book visit www.ticketsource.co.uk/gardensuburbtheatre.
This amateur production of ‘The Vortex’ is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH LIMITED, a Concord Theatricals Company.
