Noel Coward 
Coward Plays: 6 
Semi-Monde; Point Valaine; South Sea Bubble; Nude with Violin

Philip Hoare, in his biography of Coward described
Semi-Monde as his ‘most daring play to date. In a chic Parisian hotel, a series of sexual

pairings take place through rendezvous, arguments, infidelities and

reconciliations: sexual deviance is undisguised…set in the bisexual

1920s, the play could easily be populated by characters of Coward»s

society’.








Point Valaine is ‘the

drama of a lurid episode of lust in the semi-tropics.. unmistakably the

work of a master of the stage’ (New York Times);
South Sea Bubble which

concerns ‘the Governor»s lady in the Isle of Samolo who plays with

native fire, nearly gets her wings singed, bashes her native admirer

with a bottle and at one of those Coward next-morning-at breakfast

scenes slips her way out of the scrape with feline grace.’ (Manchester

Guardian) whilst
Nude With Violin is a witty comedy about art fraud.