Noel and Gertie on stage again

JAMES Millar and Lucy Maunder are recreating Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence's most famous scenes in a new stage production.

JAMES Millar and Lucy Maunder are recreating Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence's most famous scenes in a new stage production.

The wit and wiles which characterised Noel Coward’s writing were also the hallmarks of his most important professional relationship and enduring personal friendship with Gertrude Lawrence.

Now all the fire and ice of their lifelong association, as well as the most memorable moments of mirth and music they created, have been brought back to the stage in Noel and Gertie.

For rising Australian stars Lucy Maunder and James Millar, the show has been as much about capturing the complex chemistry of actress Lawrence and Coward as it has been about recreating their most famous scenes, songs and sketches.

“They were best friends really - at least, that’s what Coward promotes in his journals,” Millar says.

“But they were very different to each other: He seemed to get brittle with her quite frequently because she was a bit of a firecracker, a wild child, and she had a lot of expectation of him because it was his work that launched her career.”

Maunder says Lawrence would “demand for Coward to write her things to bring her out of bankruptcy”.

“The delight of the show is the exploration of a non-romantic relationship between the two of them that was lifelong,” she says.

Much of the show, which is described as “an entertainment” devised by the late English author, biographer and critic Sheridan Morley and has been directed by Australian stage veteran Nancye Hayes, is built around extracts from diaries and letters.

“A lot of what I address to the audience is directly from the words written by Coward about his relationship with Gertrude,” Millar says. “It’s mixed up with extracts from all their famous pieces together, anything he wrote for her: Private Lives, Blythe Spirit, Still Life, Red Peppers. A confection is exactly what it is, but it’s largely verbatim from his diaries.”

After meeting Lawrence while working on a Liverpool production of Hannele in 1913, Coward wrote his first revue London Calling! for her in 1922.

“The relationship didn’t stop until her death,” Millar says.

Lawrence died suddenly, aged just 54, from undiagnosed cancer, shortly after winning a Tony Award for her starring role in The King and I, for which she had approached Coward to write the score.

“It was very upsetting for him, apparently. Because they lived trans-continentally, he just trusted that she would be around for a lot longer. They hadn’t worked together for about 12 years … but he had plans for her. She didn’t see it coming either - she was tired, that’s all.”

Maunder, who recently performed a tribute to the music of Irving Berlin at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, has a particular fondness for the period.

“This year I’ve done a Richard Rodgers show, a Noel Coward show, a Berlin show, a Brel show … and then we did a war show as well, songs from both World Wars,” she says.

“It’s such a joy for us to perform this every night because it just relishes the English language so much and the lyrics are so brilliant. We don’t get that kind of stuff in modern music … well you do, but not in the same way as the Coward language.”

Millar says the censorship and conventions of the day meant that people had to be more clever with their double entendres and romantic references.

“That’s what Coward was so famous for: Being mischievous but remaining clever in his mischief … the subtext,” he says.

“It’s actually a period that did value the English language so much. Because I’m a writer as well, it’s lovely to explore this kind of material and respect it for what it was, which was incredibly well put together literature.”

Millar says he has also developed an affinity for the era through doing the show, as well as the musical Grey Gardens - based on a documentary about Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter in the 1940s - although his more recent efforts have been in contemporary settings, including Jerry Springer the Opera.

Beyond its nostalgic appeal, Maunder says younger audiences love the language. “They think it’s really funny because it’s so witty,” she says.

Noel and Gertie is at the Space Theatre from July 23 to 27. Book at BASS.