This Year of Grace


'This Year of Grace'''''

Background

By 1928 Noël Coward's early theatrical success had begun to elude him. After the 1925 hit show On with the Dance he wrote four plays, of which Semi-Monde was never staged during his lifetime, This Was a Man was refused a licence by the official British censor and opened instead on Broadway, running for 31 performances, The Marquise managed a run of 129 performances, and Home Chat closed after 38 performances. In late 1927 a 1921 play of his, Sirocco, was premiered and failed conspicuously, with a fiasco on the first night followed by a run of 28 performances. Coward was under contract to write a revue for the impresario Charles B. Cochran, and in view of his own current poor box-office record he offered to release Cochran from the contract. Cochran declined; he told Coward he was quite sure that the revue would turn out to be triumphant and "one in the eye" for all his critics. Cochran was soon able to announce to the press, "What I have seen of this revue 'book' is some of the most brilliantly witty work Coward has ever done".
The revues of Cochran and others frequently included the year of production in their titles, and the new show was billed for its pre-London try-out in Manchester as Charles B. Cochran's 1928 Revue. Coward's secretary, Lorn Lorraine, suggested varying this formula with a title that drew on a traditional term for any particular year of the Christian era, and This Year of Grace! was adopted for the London opening.

Productions

Britain

The revue opened at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, running from 28 February to 17 March, and transferred to the London Pavilion in the West End on 22 March 1928, where it ran for 316 performances.
The large cast, headed by Sonnie Hale, Jessie Matthews, Tilly Losch and Maisie Gay, also included Douglas Byng, Joan Clarkson, Sheilah Graham, Fred Groves, Moya Nugent and Marjorie Robertson. The director was Frank Collins; Ernest Irving conducted, and the pianist was Leslie Hutchinson. Losch and Max Rivers arranged the dancing. The designers included Oliver Messel and Doris Zinkeisen.
Among the sketches was a guide to London theatre in which Coward made fun of his own recent theatrical disasters. Among the songs were two that became well known and were prominent in Coward's cabaret repertoire: "Dance, Little Lady" and "A Room With a View". The revue restored Coward's fortunes. His biographer Philip Hoare writes that it "earn Coward the immense sum of £1000 a week in royalties, and further income from sales in their thousands of the hit songs in sheet music and gramophone records".

US

Cochran decided to open the show in New York while it was still running in London. Coward recalled:
Produced by Cochran and Archie Selwyn, the Broadway production opened on 7 November 1928 at the Selwyn Theatre. Coward wrote that the show was unchanged except for the interpolation of two solo numbers for Lillie: "World Weary" and "I Can't Think" ; and two duets for Coward and Lillie: "Lilac Time", a burlesque of opéra bouffe, and "Love, Life and Laughter", a sketch and song of Paris night life in the 1880s. These numbers replaced "Mad About You", "It Doesn't Matter how Old You Are", "Spanish Fantasy", and the Tilly Losch items "Gothic" and "Arabesque".
Coward, lacking recent practice as a dancer, took lessons, "necessary but painful", in preparation. He commented later, "I remember Jessie Matthews in tears over her dance for "A Room With a View" and my own tears over my own dance for the same number when I did it later in New York". After the New York production opened, three of the numbers used in it were introduced into the London production, including "World Weary", sung by Matthews.
The show ran in New York for 157 performances. Coward usually made it a rule not to play in any production for more than three months, but such was the demand for tickets that he was persuaded to remain for the whole run.

Subsequent productions

Maisie Gay led the cast in a tour of Australia in 1929, but thereafter, like most revues, This Year of Grace was not revived, although several of its numbers have been incorporated in later shows such as Cowardy Custard and Oh, Coward!. Coward included some, particularly "Dance, Little Lady" and "A Room With a View", but also "World Weary" and "Teach Me to Dance Like Grandma", in his later solo cabaret performances.

Songs

Some songs were dropped and others introduced during the run. The following are in the text that Coward published in 1939:
;Act I
  • "Waiting in a Queue"
  • "Mary Make Believe"
  • "Mad About You"
  • "Lorelei"
  • "A Room With a View"
  • "Teach Me to Dance Like Grandma"
;Act II
  • "Lido"
  • "Little Women"
  • "English Lido"
  • "Mothers' Complaint"
  • "Britannia Rules the Waves"
  • "Dance, Little Lady"
  • "Chauve Souris"
  • "Try to Learn to Love"
  • "It Doesn't Matter How Old You Are"
  • "Finale"

Other numbers

  • "Lilac Time"
  • "Love, Life and Laughter ".
  • "Velasquez"
  • "I Can't Think"
  • "World Weary"
  • "American Finale"
The Noël Coward Society, drawing on performing statistics from the publishers and the Performing Rights Society, ranks "A Room With a View" as among Coward's ten most popular songs.

Reception

The revue received enthusiastic notices. A dissenting voice was that of A. G. Macdonnell, author of England, Their England, who called the show "without exception, the dullest revue it has ever been my misfortune to see". But St John Ervine in The Observer was eloquent in praise of the piece:
After the New York opening a critic wrote: