INTERVIEW: Simon Green, David Shrubsole celebrate Noël Coward again at 59E59
Singer Simon Green and accompanist David Shrubsole have made something of a residency at 59E59 Theaters in Midtown Manhattan with their evenings devoted to the wit and wisdom of Noël Coward and his contemporaries. Their cabaret collaborations have included the well-recieved Coward at Christmas, Traveling Light and So, This Then Is Life. Although the words for each show are not exclusively from Coward, the famed British writer and playwright is certainly an inspiration throughout each of the performances.
Their latest trip into Coward-ice is Life Is For Living: Conversations With Coward. 59E59 promises an evening of Coward’s songs and words with sprinklings of other influences, including the wit of Dillie Keane (Fascinating Aïda), the satire of Jeremy Nicholas, the lyricism of Irving Berlin and the poetry of Maya Angelou. Both are billed as co-creators.
The holiday morsel should be equal parts enlightening and entertaining, and there are no better Coward interpreters than Green and Shrubsole. Their seamless work together is professional and celebratory, matched only by the likes of Keane and company. Audiences can expect a few original tunes as well.
Recently, Green and Shrubsole exchanged emails with Hollywood Soapbox on all things Coward. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What can audiences expect from the new show Life Is For Living: Conversations With Coward?
SG: This show is not only a celebration of Coward and his contemporaries, but it reveals how his writing remains as relevant today as it did in the early 20th century. From the wealth of Coward material we have been able to investigate all sorts of topics, including his professional, religious and personal beliefs and thoughts on Jack Wilson, Ivor Novello, Gershwin and Irving Berlin amongst many others.
DS: Hopefully we’ve written a glorious insight into the life of one of the most inspirational popular artists from England to influence the U.S. (and 20th century Western culture). We’ve taken real conversations between him and those around him from letters and diary extracts and combined them with our own artistic conversation with him in 2016. There’s loads of great Coward but also new songs written in response to him and his work (and settings of his spoken word) alongside songs from his contemporaries.
What is it about Coward and his music that inspire you?
SG: I’m fascinated that, alongside some of the greatest musical artists Berlin, Porter, Herman, Sondheim, Coward writes both the lyrics and the music. This gives the work real muscularity and strength and is a gift to an actor. There are a number of poems in the show, some of which David has set to music, that have a lightness of touch and yet a profound sincerity that we hope will give our audience a real insight into not only Coward’s life but also their own.
DS: Coward couldn’t help but write a damn good melody that never quite goes where one expects. His harmonic shifts are always surprising and they, in combination with the depth of his lyrics, create an exquisite, compelling alchemy which never loses its wit and style.
Could you discuss working with David Shrubsole? It seems like a great collaboration between you two.
DS: I’ll leave that one to SG.
SG: OK, working with David presents me with some of the most challenging, exhilarating and rewarding experiences of my career. Our work is a total collaboration and, although in our performances it may seem like David is just the accompanist, he is in fact my director, co-creator and a full part of the life blood of our work. We both have careers outside our cabaret work: Recently David has been the composer for the opening of the Singapore Gallery, the music supervisor of American Psycho on Broadway, conductor of Threepenny Opera at the National Theatre.
I have just returned from playing Bernadette in the UK tour of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, which also took in Auckland, Amsterdam and Tel Aviv — so a far cry from cabaret in New York! This means that when our schedules allow and we create new work, we come together with a freshness and intensity that we both find really stimulating, and after 20 years we are still having fun.
What does the rehearsal process entail for a show like Life Is For Living?
SG: Our first approach is always the words, the meaning and the story that we want to tell. For this program we have found and unearthed some quite rare songs from the Coward repertoire and have discovered some beauties. The Coward estate has been invaluable in helping us source some rare manuscripts. For Life Is for Living, David has done settings for a Coward lyric and a Cole Porter lyric for which the music has been lost. It’s exciting to think that we’re bringing some of these great artists’ work back into the light.
DS: Each show we produce is entirely new. We’ve never been able to satisfy ourselves by gluing songs that we already know together. We start with a premise. In this instance, how do we keep a conversation with Coward alive where we learn more than we knew before about such a fascinating writer/polymath. From there we hunt for much more material than we need. Then, the piece of theatre starts to reveal itself to us as we see resonances, tensions and contradictions in the wealth of material, and from there the show is built. Then Simon has to learn it, and David has to write or arrange it … Simple!?!
Is it difficult to dwindle the song list down to fit into one evening? There are so many possible selections.
SG: We are lucky that there is such a vast repertoire to choose from between the music, the poetry and all the writings. We found nearly 100 pieces and then went through reducing them to the material we now have for the show.
Do you find British and American audiences differ in how they approach Coward’s music and your shows?
SG: We hope that there is a directness and universality in our work that audiences find entertaining and stimulating. In that sense, I’m not sure that our audiences on either side of the Atlantic really do differ. However, this will be our fourth time at 59E59, and we are always delighted to see friendly faces returning each time. 59E59 Theaters has an amazingly loyal audience base, and their support of the work there is impressive.
DS: I think American audiences “get” Coward more. I’m not sure Coward’s image in the U.K. has fully emerged from its demise during the ’50s. Terence Rattigan is experiencing a huge revival of respect in the U.K. at the moment, and, although Coward’s crowd pleasers have never really left the commercial repertoire, he is yet to quite have the serious resurgence that he deserves. American audiences seem to be able to accept him and his work at face value without the English sense of snobbery.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Life Is For Living: Conversations With Coward is currently playing 59E59 Theaters through Jan. 1. Click here for more information and tickets. Click here for Hollywood Soapbox’s 2014 interview with Simon Green.
