Coward Plays:One - Hay Fever; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; Easy Virtue

357 pages. page edge and text lightly tanned, good clean copyThis first volume in the Coward Collection contains four plays written within a two year period when Coward and the century were still in their 20s. The volu me is introduced by Sheridan Morley, Coward's first biographer. Hay Fever, a com edy of bad manners, concerns a weekend with friends of the Bliss family, who hav e all been invited independently for a weekend at their country house near Maide nhead. The Vortex was a controversial drama in its time, introducing drug-addict ion onto the stage at a time when alcoholism was barely mentioned. Fallen Angels , which is written for two star actresses was described as 'degenerate', 'vile', 'obscene', 'shocking' - the second half of the play is entirely taken up with a n alcoholic duologue between the two women. Easy Virtue is an elegant, laconic t ribute to a lost world of drawing-room dramas, no other writer went more directl y to the jugular of that moralistic, tight-lipped but fundamentally hypocritical 20s society. He is simply a phenomenon, and one that is unlikely to occur ever again in theatre history Terence Rattigan.…