Coward Plays

'The sixth volume in the Coward Collection. Philip Hoare, in his biography of Coward described Semi-Monde as his ''most daring play to date. In a chic Parisian hotel, a series of sexual pairings take place through rendezvous, arguments, infidelities and reconciliations: sexual deviance is undisguised...set in the bisexual 1920s, the play could easily be populated by characters of Coward''s society: dandy aesthetes such as Harold Acton, Brian Howard, Cecil Beaton, Stephen Tennant and their female counterparts, Nancy Cunard, Diana Cooper, Iris Tree and Tallulah Bankhead''. Point Valaine is ''the drama of a lurid episode of lust in the semi-tropics.. unmistakably the work of a master of the stage'' (New York Times); South Sea Bubble which concerns the Governor''s lady in the Isle of Samolo who plays with native fire, nearly gets her wings singed, bashes her native admirer with a bottle and at one of those Coward next-morning-at breakfast scenes slips her way out of the scrape with feline grace. (Manchester Guardian) whilst Nude With Violin is a witty comedy about art fraud. ''He is simply a phenomenon, and one that is unlikely to occur ever again in theatre history'' Terence Rattigan'