Jun 8, 2019
ITV Play Of The Week: A Choice Of Coward: The Vortex (Granada, 1964)
"Just a little while ago you were really suffering for once, and in a way I was glad - because it showed you were capable of a genuine emotion. Now you're glossing it over, smarming it down with your returning vanity; soon you won't be unhappy anymore, just vindictive."
#itv play of the week#a choice of coward#the vortex#1964#noël coward#modern drama#single play#joan kemp welch#Margaret johnston#Ann bell#Nicholas pennell#Faith brook#Noel howlett#philip bond#Tony bateman#Bernadette milnes#Tom Gill#Angela barrie#Gerald savory#Where the first two plays suffered slightly from having dated and seeming out of place in the swinging sixties#This is saved that fate by being explicitly set in the 1920s. A necessity really as the plot and many of the supplementary touches#Simply wouldn't work outside the decade in which it was first written and performed. This was the play that made coward's name#Both as writer and actor. He wrote the young male lead for himself. I suppose it is (as he describes it in his typically witty introduction#A 'whacking great part' but not a flattering one. Nicky is a great wet drip and second in awfulness only to his mother. As Florence Margare#Johnston is a whirlwind of horrific energy and vapid hollow depravity. Beginning the play as simply an embarrassment she ends it as a#True grotesque. The final scenes are very difficult to stage. It's a hairline between pathos and bathos and two horribly self absorbed#Socialites wailing at each other almost tips over into parody. Johnston and pennell do well and just about get away with it#These final scenes are maybe the strongest in the play but they're also the first time I've seen coward (perhaps unconsciously) channel the#Work of another writer. The wailing gnashing of teeth show down between mother and son full of violent accusation and bitter self pity is#Pure ibsen. In fact the last act is all very reminiscent (thematically at least) of ghosts. Faith brook walks away with this btw
