Post Mortem (Coward play)
Encyclopedia
Post Mortem is a one-act play in eight scenes, written in 1930 by Noël Coward
. He wrote it after appearing in, and being moved by, an earlier play about World War I
, Journey's End
. As soon as he had completed it, however, he decided that it was suitable for publication but not for production.
The play was first staged in a prisoner of war
camp in Austria in 1944, and a television version was broadcast in 1968. It was not professionally presented on stage until 1992, two decades after Coward's death. Critical opinion has generally agreed with Coward about the effectiveness of the play onstage, although it includes some techniques that Coward used elsewhere with greater success.
's play Journey's End
, set in the trenches of World War I
. He did not consider his performance successful, writing afterwards that his audience "politely watched me take a fine part in a fine play and throw it into the alley." However, he was "strongly affected by the poignancy of the play itself" and wrote his own "angry little vilification of war" shortly afterwards. As soon as it was written, he decided that it was for publication only and should not be staged, and he published it in 1931. The press commented on the absence of a production: "Mr Noel Coward, riding on the crest of such a wave of success that it might have been imagined that his least work would be bargained for, published last year a serious play, Post-Mortem, that, so far as we know, no manager made the smallest attempt to produce."
When the first volume of Coward's collected plays was published in 1934, he wrote an introduction commenting on the various plays. Reviewing the volume, the critic St. John Ervine wrote of Post Mortem, Mr. Coward's considered judgment on it is sound, and a sign of his rapidly maturing talent. He now regards it as 'sadly confused and unbalanced'." Reviewing the same volume, James Agate
praised Coward's seriousness and reproached avant garde theatres for failing to stage the play. In 1935 a production was planned at a small provincial theatre with a reputation for staging new works, but the plans were not realised.
The play foreshadows Coward's treatment of the theme of ghosts in his 1940 play, Blithe Spirit
. The middle scenes of Post Mortem portray John as a ghost whom everyone can see, but about whose nature the other characters are apparently not greatly concerned. In the later play, there are two ghosts, which some characters can see and others cannot. The last scene uses the same technique as Ambrose Bierce's
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
", where, at the end, it is revealed that most of the story occurred only within the protagonist's mind. Also used in the last scene is the portrayal of death as a shadow enveloping the one dying.
The next six scenes take place in England in 1930. John, now a ghost dressed in the muddy uniform he died in, encounters family, friends, and those of his wartime comrades who have survived. He finds out what the war, ended more than ten years past, has meant to them – not much, it turns out. Perry had survived the war and has written a book, Post Mortem, exposing the truth about the horrible treatment of England's soldiers returned from "The Great War". John's mother is afraid of the book, John's father wants the book banned, and John's girlfriend treats it as a rare collector's item to be prized for its monetary worth. Perry, after a spirited monologue laying out the miserable aftermath of war, shoots himself in the head in despair.
In the last scene, back in 1917 in the French trenches, John dies, receding into shadow, lamenting the futility of his generation's sacrifice.
, at Eichstatt
, Austria. The four leading parts were performed by professional actors, Michael Goodliffe
, Dan Cunningham, Brian McIrvine and Desmond Llewelyn
, and the play was produced and directed by a fifth professional actor and producer, Wallace Finlayson. The archive at King's College, Cambridge
, England, contains "an array of photographs, handbills and programmes from Christmas pantomimes produced between 1940 and 1943, not in a local village hall, but in three POW camps in Austria". The Germans permitted the production, with as many stage costumes and props as could be devised, only after the entire cast and backstage crew had given an undertaking that they would use nothing to make an escape.
The first commercial presentation was a television version produced by Harry Moore for the BBC
. It was first aired, on 17 September 1968, as the second episode of the BBC television series The Jazz Age, a fifteen-episode compilation of short plays about the Jazz Age
. John Mackenzie directed, and Ron Grainer
created the original music. The cast included Keith Barron
as John Cavan, Colin Jeavons
as Perry Lomas, Nora Swinburne
as Lady Cavan, and Bernard Lee
as Sir James.
The commercial stage première was at The King's Head Theatre
, London, on 7 October 1992, directed by Richard Stirling, with a cast including Avril Angers
as Lady Stagg-Mortimer, Sylvia Syms
as Lady Cavan, Harry Burton as John Cavan, and Steven Pacey
as Perry Lomas.
considered the play "a fine effort, a really fine effort.... As argument it is first rate. As imagination magnificent … and gave me a thrill to read it."
The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama notes that "The British theater had abundant room for the comic Coward, but none for the angry, bitter Coward of Post Mortem", and that Coward had two playwriting personas: one "crowd-pleasing (and) comic", the other "darker (and) serious". The Encyclopedia does not record much appreciation, if any, even years later, for this play written by Coward's dark side. However, it bestows some backhanded praise by admitting that "the play is outstanding as a polemical, vitriolic attack on British disregard for World War I victims".
When the play was staged in London in 1992, the critical response was mixed. The Times
and The Independent
were hostile. Benedict Nightingale
of The Times wrote, "It is the sort of anti-war play you might expect from someone who never swapped a shot in anger and at some level feels guilty for having survived the slaughter: shrill, awkward.... It is just the sort of didactic plod that Coward hated when others were writing; and with good reason. The Independent praised the production, but said, "this rather hysterical anti-war play has been under cover for good reason.... [The] play's shrillness, grandiosity and caricature reflect Coward's remoteness from the battlefield as well as his denial of the contemporary mood.... [It is] a vaporous polemic, which turns oddly sentimental at the end, when John praises the joys of battle. In The Guardian
, Michael Billington
was more complimentary: "I respect Coward's blazing, up-front anger. In particular, he gives Lomas a powerful diatribe attacking the political confusion, economic chaos and press mendacity of Britain in 1930: a speech that is chillingly appropriate today.... What disfigures the play is not Coward's thumping message but the mechanical nature of Cavan's civilian Cook's tour and the easy caricature of soft targets: philandering press-magnates, pleasure-seeking bishops and purblind Lady Bountifuls. Surprisingly, Coward's social satire is less potent than his straightforward political anger." The Sunday Times
praised both the production and the play:
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
. He wrote it after appearing in, and being moved by, an earlier play about World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Journey's End
Journey's End
Journey's End is a 1928 drama, the seventh of English playwright R. C. Sherriff. It was first performed at the Apollo Theatre in London by the Incorporated Stage Society on 9 December 1928, starring a young Laurence Olivier, and soon moved to other West End theatres for a two-year run...
. As soon as he had completed it, however, he decided that it was suitable for publication but not for production.
The play was first staged in a prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
camp in Austria in 1944, and a television version was broadcast in 1968. It was not professionally presented on stage until 1992, two decades after Coward's death. Critical opinion has generally agreed with Coward about the effectiveness of the play onstage, although it includes some techniques that Coward used elsewhere with greater success.
Background
In 1930, Coward briefly played the role of Stanhope in R. C. SherriffR. C. Sherriff
-External links:**...
's play Journey's End
Journey's End
Journey's End is a 1928 drama, the seventh of English playwright R. C. Sherriff. It was first performed at the Apollo Theatre in London by the Incorporated Stage Society on 9 December 1928, starring a young Laurence Olivier, and soon moved to other West End theatres for a two-year run...
, set in the trenches of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. He did not consider his performance successful, writing afterwards that his audience "politely watched me take a fine part in a fine play and throw it into the alley." However, he was "strongly affected by the poignancy of the play itself" and wrote his own "angry little vilification of war" shortly afterwards. As soon as it was written, he decided that it was for publication only and should not be staged, and he published it in 1931. The press commented on the absence of a production: "Mr Noel Coward, riding on the crest of such a wave of success that it might have been imagined that his least work would be bargained for, published last year a serious play, Post-Mortem, that, so far as we know, no manager made the smallest attempt to produce."
When the first volume of Coward's collected plays was published in 1934, he wrote an introduction commenting on the various plays. Reviewing the volume, the critic St. John Ervine wrote of Post Mortem, Mr. Coward's considered judgment on it is sound, and a sign of his rapidly maturing talent. He now regards it as 'sadly confused and unbalanced'." Reviewing the same volume, James Agate
James Agate
James Evershed Agate was a British diarist and critic. In the period between the wars, he was one of Britain's most influential theatre critics...
praised Coward's seriousness and reproached avant garde theatres for failing to stage the play. In 1935 a production was planned at a small provincial theatre with a reputation for staging new works, but the plans were not realised.
The play foreshadows Coward's treatment of the theme of ghosts in his 1940 play, Blithe Spirit
Blithe Spirit
Blithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to...
. The middle scenes of Post Mortem portray John as a ghost whom everyone can see, but about whose nature the other characters are apparently not greatly concerned. In the later play, there are two ghosts, which some characters can see and others cannot. The last scene uses the same technique as Ambrose Bierce's
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a short story by Ambrose Bierce. It was originally published in 1890, and first collected in Bierce's 1891 book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians...
", where, at the end, it is revealed that most of the story occurred only within the protagonist's mind. Also used in the last scene is the portrayal of death as a shadow enveloping the one dying.
Synopsis
Scene One, set in 1917 France at the start of World War I, focuses on John Cavan, a young English soldier, the son of a London editor. In the trenches, John argues with another soldier, Perry Lomas, over the war; Perry accuses John's father of glorifying war in his newspaper, but John denies this. At the end of the scene, John is mortally wounded by enemy fire. He is dragged back to the trench, where as he lies dying he imagines the reaction of the people he knows best to the end of the war.The next six scenes take place in England in 1930. John, now a ghost dressed in the muddy uniform he died in, encounters family, friends, and those of his wartime comrades who have survived. He finds out what the war, ended more than ten years past, has meant to them – not much, it turns out. Perry had survived the war and has written a book, Post Mortem, exposing the truth about the horrible treatment of England's soldiers returned from "The Great War". John's mother is afraid of the book, John's father wants the book banned, and John's girlfriend treats it as a rare collector's item to be prized for its monetary worth. Perry, after a spirited monologue laying out the miserable aftermath of war, shoots himself in the head in despair.
In the last scene, back in 1917 in the French trenches, John dies, receding into shadow, lamenting the futility of his generation's sacrifice.
Productions
Post Mortem was published in 1931, but was not staged until 1944. Its première was a production by British prisoners of war in a German camp, during World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, at Eichstatt
Eichstätt
Eichstätt is a town in the federal state of Bavaria, Germany, and capital of the District of Eichstätt. It is located along the Altmühl River, at , and had a population of 13,078 in 2002. It is home to the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, the lone Catholic university in Germany. The...
, Austria. The four leading parts were performed by professional actors, Michael Goodliffe
Michael Goodliffe
Lawrence Michael Andrew Goodliffe was an English actor best known for playing suave roles such as doctors, lawyers and army officers. He was also sometimes cast in working class parts....
, Dan Cunningham, Brian McIrvine and Desmond Llewelyn
Desmond Llewelyn
Desmond Wilkinson Llewelyn was a Welsh actor, famous for playing Q in 17 of the James Bond films between 1963 and 1999.-Early life:...
, and the play was produced and directed by a fifth professional actor and producer, Wallace Finlayson. The archive at King's College, Cambridge
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....
, England, contains "an array of photographs, handbills and programmes from Christmas pantomimes produced between 1940 and 1943, not in a local village hall, but in three POW camps in Austria". The Germans permitted the production, with as many stage costumes and props as could be devised, only after the entire cast and backstage crew had given an undertaking that they would use nothing to make an escape.
The first commercial presentation was a television version produced by Harry Moore for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. It was first aired, on 17 September 1968, as the second episode of the BBC television series The Jazz Age, a fifteen-episode compilation of short plays about the Jazz Age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
. John Mackenzie directed, and Ron Grainer
Ron Grainer
Ronald Erle “Ron” Grainer was an Australian-born composer who worked for most of his professional career in the United Kingdom. He is mostly remembered for his film and television music.- Biography :...
created the original music. The cast included Keith Barron
Keith Barron
Keith Barron is an English actor and television presenter, well-known from numerous roles on British television from the 1960s to the present day.-Career:...
as John Cavan, Colin Jeavons
Colin Jeavons
Colin Jeavons is a Welsh television actor.-Career:Jeavons is best known as Inspector Lestrade in the Granada television serials The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or the part of the undertaker, Shadrack, in the television situation comedy written by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall from...
as Perry Lomas, Nora Swinburne
Nora Swinburne
Nora Swinburne was a British actress, born Leonora Mary Johnson in Bath, Somerset, daughter of Henry Swinburne Johnson and his wife Leonora Tamar ....
as Lady Cavan, and Bernard Lee
Bernard Lee
John Bernard Lee was an English actor, best known for his role as M in the first eleven James Bond films.-Life and career:...
as Sir James.
The commercial stage première was at The King's Head Theatre
The King's Head Theatre
The King's Head Theatre, founded in 1970 by Dan Crawford, is an Off-West End venue in London. It was the first pub theatre in the UK. Adam Spreadbury-Maher became Artistic Director in March 2010 .-Background:...
, London, on 7 October 1992, directed by Richard Stirling, with a cast including Avril Angers
Avril Angers
Avril Florence Angers was an English stand up comedienne and actress.- Life :Angers was born in Liverpool. She danced with the Tiller Girls before joining ENSA during the Second World War, becoming a Forces' sweetheart. She never married or had children...
as Lady Stagg-Mortimer, Sylvia Syms
Sylvia Syms
Sylvia M. L. Syms OBE is a British actress. She is probably best known for her roles in the films Woman in a Dressing Gown , Ice-Cold in Alex , No Trees in the Street , Victim and The Tamarind Seed...
as Lady Cavan, Harry Burton as John Cavan, and Steven Pacey
Steven Pacey
Steven Pacey is an English actor, best known for his role as Del Tarrant in the third and fourth seasons of the sci-fi series Blake's 7....
as Perry Lomas.
Reception
Coward commented on the play: "I wrote it too hot off the grid" and, as a result, produced something that was "shallow", lacking in "real experience", and which "muddled the issues … I might have done better if I had given more time to it, and less vehemence." When the play was first published, The Daily Mirror wrote, "A fearful study in disillusionment! … The misery is, if I may use a vulgarism, laid on very thick. But there are passion and brave satire in this play. Mr. Coward is to be congratulated. He is always renewing himself. I am afraid, however, that, for the stage, Post Mortem is really too depressing to make another Journey's End. T. E. LawrenceT. E. Lawrence
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO , known professionally as T. E. Lawrence, was a British Army officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916–18...
considered the play "a fine effort, a really fine effort.... As argument it is first rate. As imagination magnificent … and gave me a thrill to read it."
The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama notes that "The British theater had abundant room for the comic Coward, but none for the angry, bitter Coward of Post Mortem", and that Coward had two playwriting personas: one "crowd-pleasing (and) comic", the other "darker (and) serious". The Encyclopedia does not record much appreciation, if any, even years later, for this play written by Coward's dark side. However, it bestows some backhanded praise by admitting that "the play is outstanding as a polemical, vitriolic attack on British disregard for World War I victims".
When the play was staged in London in 1992, the critical response was mixed. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
and The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
were hostile. Benedict Nightingale
Benedict Nightingale
Benedict Nightingale is a British journalist and a regular theatre critic for The Times newspaper. He was born in 1939 and educated at Charterhouse and Magdalene College, Cambridge...
of The Times wrote, "It is the sort of anti-war play you might expect from someone who never swapped a shot in anger and at some level feels guilty for having survived the slaughter: shrill, awkward.... It is just the sort of didactic plod that Coward hated when others were writing; and with good reason. The Independent praised the production, but said, "this rather hysterical anti-war play has been under cover for good reason.... [The] play's shrillness, grandiosity and caricature reflect Coward's remoteness from the battlefield as well as his denial of the contemporary mood.... [It is] a vaporous polemic, which turns oddly sentimental at the end, when John praises the joys of battle. In The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, Michael Billington
Michael Billington (critic)
Michael Keith Billington is a British author and arts critic. Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised...
was more complimentary: "I respect Coward's blazing, up-front anger. In particular, he gives Lomas a powerful diatribe attacking the political confusion, economic chaos and press mendacity of Britain in 1930: a speech that is chillingly appropriate today.... What disfigures the play is not Coward's thumping message but the mechanical nature of Cavan's civilian Cook's tour and the easy caricature of soft targets: philandering press-magnates, pleasure-seeking bishops and purblind Lady Bountifuls. Surprisingly, Coward's social satire is less potent than his straightforward political anger." The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
praised both the production and the play:
I would never have guessed that this 80-minute vitriolic anti-war fantasy, written in 1930, was by Noel Coward. Its first professional production reveals it as a tough, febrile piece, awash with melodrama and blazing up now and again with bitter, glittering humour.... Coward's hatred of this brittle, blasé age, which does not want to understand the horrors of the first world war, is not so surprising as his perception that the second is already in the making: someone actually remarks that the next Olympic games (1932) could be a preparation for it. I never imagined that the Master, at 31, was so politically switched on. The writing is a little mannered, but the young cast handles it as if it was entirely real, and Steven Pacey, as the disillusioned survivor, draws a most subtle sketch of upper-class despair.
External links
- The Noël Coward Society website
- The Noël Coward Estate website
- Photograph from first production showing Michael GoodliffeMichael GoodliffeLawrence Michael Andrew Goodliffe was an English actor best known for playing suave roles such as doctors, lawyers and army officers. He was also sometimes cast in working class parts....
and Dan Cunningham
