History
Coward wrote: "Present Laughter is a very light comedy and was written with the sensible object of providing me with a bravura part". He completed the playscript (as well as the one for This Happy Breed) in 1939, before the outbreak of World War II, but did not produce the plays until 1942. Given the hero's repeated laments over his own ageing and mortality, the title can be seen as ironic. Coward acknowledged that the central character, the egocentric actor Garry Essendine, was a self-caricature. Coward repeats one of his signature theatrical devices at the end of the play, where the main characters tiptoe out as the curtain falls – a device that he also used in Private Lives, Hay Fever and Blithe Spirit.
Coward had served the British government in intelligence work in the early years of the war. Winston Churchill advised Coward that he could do more for the war effort by entertaining the troops and the home front than by attempts at intelligence work: "Go and sing to them when the guns are firing – that's your job!" Though disappointed, Coward followed this advice. He toured, acted and sang indefatigably in Europe, Africa, Asia and America. The play was first produced in Blackpool in September 1942, during Coward's wartime tour of Britain after he returned to the theatre. Sets and costumes were designed by Gladys Calthrop.
The notices were excellent, with The Observer writing: "Mr Coward’s production is so inventive, and his own performance so adroit in its mockery of the vain, posturing, and yet self-scrutinising and self-amused matinee idol, that Present Laughter is likely to be future mirth for as long as Mr Coward cares to run it." The Manchester Guardian added: "One is tempted to cast discretion to the winds and predict that this will be remembered as the best comedy of its kind and generation...one of those rare occasions when the critic must claim the privilege of his fellow-playgoers, simply to marvel, admire, and enjoy wholeheartedly." Coward brought the play to the Haymarket Theatre, London, in April 1947, where The Times praised it as "a wittily impudent and neatly invented burlesque of a French farce." Coward also played in a French translation, Joyeux Chagrins, in Paris in 1948.
The play is published in Methuen's Noël Coward: Collected Plays Volume Four.
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