Playwright: Noel Coward
At: Boxer Rebellion Ensemble,
1257 W. Loyola
Phone: (773) 465-7325; $15
Runs through: April 10
This 1924 play made Noel Coward a star. He wrote and directed it and performed it to acclaim in London and New York. It's about Florence and Nicky Lancaster, an oedipal mother and son of the Leisure Class. Fading beauty Florence takes Tom as her twentysomething lover, while Nicky is a cocaine-addict musician engaged to Bunty, an independent-thinking young woman. When old flames Tom and Bunty reconnect, Nicky and Florence's illusions collapse.
The Vortex is neither a familiar Coward light comedy nor a very good play, being very much a young man's work (Coward was 24). He wrote it specifically to showcase his multi-talents, to shock a little (but never too much) and always to amuse. Scenes of witty, arch and superficial comedy alternate with near-melodrama, bound together by 19th Century plot mechanics and a paper-thin story. With the exception of Helen, the family friend and Greek Chorus, the characters are shallow and jejune, even Nicky and Florence.
Part of the problem is context. Theater-goers of the 1920s knew socialites like the Lancasters and their friends (Phillip Barry's plays are a more romantic American equivalent) and didn't require reasons why. They understood post-World War I disillusion and the ennui of too much money and not enough purpose, which Coward pretty thoroughly skewers in The Vortex (although he wanted it for himself, lower middle class boy that he was). Nonetheless, it's difficult for modern audiences to like—let alone care about—such self-absorbed and seemingly useless people.
The Vortex rarely has been revived (never in Chicago to my knowledge), and with good reason. How do you treat this material? As camp? As melodrama? Or do you split the difference and gut it out on style alone? That's what Coward did, and that's what Boxer Rebellion director Michael Pieper does without much success. Period material this effete and affected requires the finest style-sensitive actors, and Pieper doesn't always have them. This production would have benefited from extended rehearsal (which Off-Loop shows rarely get) allowing the company to find character beats and master style.
It's not without some pleasures. Coward's catty repartee crackles (if not always delivered on target), there are some dazzling women's costumes (Kate Kamphausen) and Pieper's Art Deco set creates the flavor of wealth on a postage-stamp stage. Christopher McLinden is an earnest and attractive Nicky, having the lanky frame and sharp nose of young Coward himself, and a peaches-and-cream complexion. The star role, however, is Florence, played by Angela Bullard who is too young and too one-note to make Florence seem more than frivolous. Alison Connelly, as good friend Helen, often seems like the only real person on stage.
May the Muses bless Boxer Rebellion, a troupe that consistently chooses difficult works and lays itself on the line. The Vortex is a not-entirely-successful curiosity, but it's an interesting curiosity. I'll take interesting over safe and dull every time.
Coward played The Vortex in Chicago in 1926. After two weeks at the Selwyn Theatre, he scrawled on the dressing room wall, 'Noel Coward died here.'
