Red Peppers - History

History

Six of the plays (We Were Dancing, The Astonished Heart, Red Peppers, Hands Across the Sea, Fumed Oak and Shadow Play) were first presented at the Manchester Opera House beginning on 15 October 1935. A seventh play, Family Album, was added on the subsequent provincial tour. The final three were added for the London run. The plays were performed in various combinations of three at each performance during the original run. The plays chosen for each performance were announced in advance, although a myth evolved that the groupings were random. Matinées were sometimes billed as Today at 2:30.

The first London performance was on 9 January 1936 at the Phoenix Theatre. It was one of the best-received plays in Tonight at 8:30 (or Tonight at 7:30 as it was billed in Manchester, to reflect the earlier starting time in the provinces in the 1930s). Coward directed all ten pieces, and each starred Coward and Gertrude Lawrence. Coward said that he wrote them as "acting, singing, and dancing vehicles for Gertrude Lawrence and myself".

Four of the plays in the cycle "break into spontaneous song ... in the most unexpected places". For the onstage scenes in Red Peppers, Coward wrote two pastiche music hall duets, "Has Anybody Seen our Ship?" and "Men About Town". Coward described the play as "a vaudeville sketch sandwiched in between two parodies of music hall songs. We always enjoyed playing it and public always enjoyed watching us play it, which of course was highly satisfactory."

The Broadway openings for the three parts took place on 24 November 1936 (including Red Peppers), 27 November 1936 and 30 November 1936 at the National Theatre, again starring Coward and Lawrence. Star Chamber was omitted. The London and New York runs were limited only by Coward's boredom at long engagements.

Major productions of parts of the cycle were revived in 1948 and 1967 on Broadway (including Red Peppers in 1948 but omitting it in 1967), 1981 at the Lyric Theatre in London (Shadow Play, Hands Across the Sea and Red Peppers), starring John Standing and Estelle Kohler and at the Chichester Festival in 2006 (Shadow Play, Hands Across the Sea, Red Peppers, Family Album, Fumed Oak and The Astonished Heart). In 1971, the Shaw Festival revived three of the plays (but not Red Peppers), and in 2000, the Williamstown Theatre Festival revived We Were Dancing, Family Album, Hands Across the Sea (all starring Blythe Danner), Red Peppers, Shadow Play and Star Chamber. The Antaeus Company in Los Angeles revived all ten plays in October 2007, and in 2009 the Shaw Festival revived the full cycle in 2009. In 1991, BBC television mounted productions of the individual plays with Joan Collins taking the Lawrence roles. Anthony Newley also starred in this version of Red Peppers. The sheer expense involved in mounting what are effectively ten different productions has usually deterred revivals of the entire Tonight at 8:30 cycle, but the constituent plays can often be seen individually or in sets of three.