A post-war generation were first brought to Coward through the music and lyrics of the 33⅓ Phillips Minigroove LP, Noel Coward at Las Vegas (BBL7108) with its iconic cover photo of Coward sipping tea in the Nevada Desert. It revealed songs from his cabaret performances at Wilbur Clarke's Desert Inn in Las Vegas and together with Noel Coward in New York, encapsulates Coward’s post-war “relaunch” to a new audience.

His influence continues to exist in every area of theatre, music and comedy. In the last decade his music has been performed by artists as diverse as the Pet Shop Boys, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Sting, Robbie Williams, Suede, Texas, and even the Monty Python team plus countless others. His musicals and plays are consistently revived on Broadway and in the West End and amateur companies queue to licence their Coward productions.

Why has this figure, that is everyone's idea of an indolent playboy from the 1920's, left such a huge and lasting impression on the world of music, theatre and comedy? Rarely a week goes by without a Coward song catching our ears from the radio, TV, or live performance. He is quoted in the press on an almost daily basis.

Musicals

Pages on the musicals of Noël Coward take a detailed look at all of the musical productions

Each page contains sections providing infomation on the show: a synopsis of the book; a list of all the musical numbers with some audio clips of selected songs and music; details of recordings; reviews; short extracts from lyrics; a cast list and interesting facts and quotations - many by Noël Coward.

Archive images of sheet music, LP and CD covers and contemporary photographs are included where possible, together with items taken from the theatre magazines of the day including Theatre World, The Play Pictorial and Theatre Arts Monthly.

Music

You do not produce some 50 plays and musicals and over 400 songs and lyrics from stylish reclining on a chaise longue! Noël Coward knew that the mythology of his persona was just a pleasant and necessary adjunct to his real skill as a craftsman of words and music - it is after all the image that most of us recall when his name is mentioned.

In recent years many popular artists have recorded Coward's work using a wide variety of styles and approaches. For example compare these two recordings of a Coward song 'Sail Away' from the musical of the same name - the first is a recording by Noël Coward from 1957, Noël Coward in New York (Phillips BBL 7167) and the second a version by The Pet Shop Boys from the 2002, Twentieth-Century Blues (EMI 7243 49463127) :

Lyrics

For many, it is in Coward's lyrics that he reveals his true talent. During his life, he was given the title 'The Master' to indicate the depth and range of his ability in so many fields of entertainment but it is in his use and application of the English language that his skill and sense of fun are best revealed.

Noël's lyrics are loved for their witty and effective use of complex rhyming schemes, where internal rhymes and rhythms are used to create incisive, mental pictures of the absurdity of the human condition in both usual and unlikely situations.

Noël Coward - The Complete Lyrics edited and annotated by Barry Day and published by Methuen, offers the most complete picture of Coward's lyric writing.

Photographs, Paintings and Caricatures

Noël Coward's strong association with music often sees him photographed, painted or caricatured with a piano, musical notes, sheet music or the paraphenalia associated with a singing star. Here are two examples.

Clive Francis the actor and caricaturist has kindly given permission for us to use the image on the right. This particular musical caricature was produced originally for a Christmas card. The painting is currently kept at Birmingham University in the Noël Coward Special Collection and was possibly painted by Winifred Ashton (Clemence Dane).