Like the short story that gave impetus to this dramatization, Noel Coward set his unproduced 1967 play, Star Quality, in the early 1950s. I couldn't help thinking, as I saw how Christopher Luscombe lovingly "finished" it, that it could be compared áwith Jane Martin's recent Anton in Show Business. Not that Coward's style isn't oceans apart from Chekhov's, but each presents old giving way to new, and oh so excruciatingly!
Like Martin's, Coward's is a backstage story, proving how hard it is to get a play produced (and here what a toll it takes on the playwright). What's necessary to both plays is the star, for she'll assure producers and backing. Each star backs a supporting player in a role her director wants to cast differently, but the fundamental rift is between star and directorial interpretations, i.e., old school vs. new. Chekhov, of course, is past caring who wins, but in Coward's case, Bryan Snow is very much involved. As author of `Dark Heritage,' his first play, he's thrilled (as Nick Fletcher makes clear, even when expressing doubts or frustrations) to be enlisted by director Ray Malcolm to help persuade famous Lorraine Barrie to play the lead. Her agreeing begins a series of disagreements between star and director, not least of which is casting toadie Marion Blake in a supporting role she's too gushy and old for. To coax Byron into rewrites, Ray dispatches Tony Oxford (Nick Waring, both toney and Oxfordian), his euphemistically-titled Personal Assistant of eleven years. That they hit it off, in Ray's eyes, perhaps too well adds tension.
Then there's the dress rehearsal where the male lead (Peter Cellier, comfy with middle age) keeps forgetting his lines, actors ask for script changes, a chaise engulfs whoever sits in it, and Lorraine bitches about her "circus canvas" dress. (Being Coward-ly, her bitching amuses.) She cooks up distress-glazed ham in a dressing-room scene and is denounced by imperious Ray (as typically áunderplayed by Russell Boulter). Beefs turn into blows, but a first night does fall; I won't tell how.
Penelope Keith easily shines as star Lorraine, but oohing Una Stubbs' ballerina skirted Marion, whom Ray rightly accuses of being a "megalomaniac's dream" onstage, nearly steals the backstage show. Another asset is Marjorie Yates' seen-it-all Nora, Lorraine's maid-cum-dresser.
The problem that makes Star Quality a definitely minor Coward achievement is the mediocrity of bits seen and heard of the play within the play. (Not a problem Jane Martin had when she could just refer to Chekhov!) As for me, I'll let Coward have the last words about his piece. When Bryan asks 'Why can't people in the theater act normal?," director Ray counters: "There wouldn't be a theater if they were normal." Hmm.
