Present Laughter
Starring Kevin Kline
Written by Noel Coward
Directed by Moritz Von Stuelpnagel
St. James Theatre
June 21, 2017
Production website
💉💉 out of 5.

Kevin Kline is just so good in this – – but there is just so much of this!  After seeing 1984 last night I was so eager to see a play that behaved itself and delivered some acting and some story.  Present Laughter, I thought – – there’s the remedy.

It was such a beautiful play.  A gorgeous set full of theatrical decadence with doors a plenty and plenty of furniture to poise, pontificate, and pursue a dalliance.  The language of Noel Coward is so rich and so wonderfully sarcastic.  It is so nice to hear a play that has vocabulary that reaches beyond two syllables.  Another real treat in the play is Kristine Nielsen as the personal secretary; I a still laughing from the work she did in Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike.  She is a comic genius.

And Kevin Kline, of course, is just perfect for the role.  He is at the right age, and the wealth of experience he has with Shakespeare makes him a true Thespian, in the most wonderfully pretentious way!  It is hard to think of any actor that could wrap himself around a Noel Coward play and artfully as Kevin Kline.  I just wished that he had started with Blithe Spirt or Private Lives.  These two plays go somewhere.  They put a bit more plot around all the clever lines and beautiful clothes.  I just found Present Laughter so stuck in the sand – – it kept spinning its wheels but it just didn’t move – and the audience was soon napping away.   Not me – but I was imagining him on the veranda of Private Lives.