The Stage

Cowardy Custard

Published Tuesday 12 April 2011 at 10:26 by Mark Shenton

“What’s the use of calculated nostalgia?”, asks Noel Coward in a 1963 diary entry quoted in Cowardy Custard, a cabaret revue of his songs neatly dovetailed with scenes from his plays that was first produced nearly 40 years ago. There’s actually plenty of nostalgia that has been perfectly calculated by its original devisers Gerald Frow, Alan Strachan and Wendy Toye to provide a glancing commentary and gloss on his work, but it is also put to good, acerbic use.

Cowardy Custard L-R - The Widow, Stuart Neal, Savannah Stevenson, Dillie Keane and Kit Hesketh-Harvey in Cowardy Custard at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford Photo: Aoifetography

For this is not merely an indulgent wallow in the shallow waters of his best known stuff, but is also full of more unfamiliar material, too. Like the custard of its title, it’s sweet and a little lumpy in places. But as served by past masters of the art of intimate, literate cabaret in Kit Hesketh-Harvey and Richard Sissons of Kit and the Widow and Dillie Keane of Fascinating Aida, joined by two younger talents (the slightly over-eager Stuart Neal and the attractive Savannah Stevenson), it is given bite and flavour, as if the custard has been poured over a particularly sharp bit of rhubarb.

Of course, rhubarb and custard is a dessert, not an entire meal, so it leaves you a little hungry for a main course, tantalising glimpses of which pass by in scenes from plays like Present Laughter and Design for Living. But this revue is more about reclaiming his songs than his plays, and they’re given marvellous expression and an often cutting edge here. It helps to prove that not all jukebox musicals need to play dumb, if the material is as smart and revealing as this is.

Directed by Paul Foster, each song tells its own complete story, and to watch the priceless Keane bring the keenest comedy wit to I’ve Been to a Marvellous Party as she gets progressively sozzled is a lesson in the art of brilliantly realised physical comedy that flows naturally from the song. Keane also scores highly with Sissons on the rarely heard Bronxville Darby and Joan.

There’s an over-strenuous attempt to introduce a contemporary relevance to London Pride, sung out against news reports of the 7/7 London terrorist attack, but overall this is a welcome, witty and civilised entertainment.