After the Ball is a musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 by Noel Coward

Noël Coward

Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

, based on Lady Windermere's Fan

Lady Windermere's Fan

Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James's Theatre in London. The play was first published in 1893...

.

After a provincial tour, the musical premiered at the Globe Theatre

Gielgud Theatre

The Gielgud Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, London, at the corner of Rupert Street. The house currently has 889 seats on three levels.-History:...

, London, on 10 June 1954 and ran for 188 performances until 20 November 1954. Robert Helpmann

Robert Helpmann

Sir Robert Helpmann CBE was an Australian dancer, actor, theatre director and choreographer.-Early years:He was born Robert Murray Helpman in Mount Gambier, South Australia and also boarded at Prince Alfred College in Adelaide. From childhood, Helpman had a strong desire to be a dancer...

 was the director, and the cast included Mary Ellis

Mary Ellis

Mary Ellis was a long-lived star of the British stage best known for her roles in the genre of musical theatre. After appearing with the Metropolitan Opera beginning in 1918, later appearing opposite Enrico Caruso, she acted on Broadway, creating the title role in Rose Marie...

, Vanessa Lee, Peter Graves

Peter Graves, 8th Baron Graves

Peter George Wellesley Graves, 8th Baron Graves , was a British actor.Born in London, Graves was the son of Henry Algernon Claude Graves, 7th Baron Graves. Admiral Thomas Graves, 1st Baron Graves, was his great-great-great-grandfather...

 and Irene Browne

Irene Browne

Irene Browne was an English stage and film actress and singer who appeared in plays and musicals such as No, No, Nanette. Later in her career, she became particularly associated with the works of Noel Coward and acted in films....

.

After the Ball was the last Coward musical launched in the West End

West End theatre

West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

; his last two musicals debuted on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 before opening in London. After the Ball enjoyed a 1999 Coward centenary production at the Peacock Theatre

Peacock Theatre

The Peacock Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, located in Portugal Street, near Aldwych. The 999-seat house is owned by, and comprises part of the London School of Economics and Political Science campus, who utilise the theatre for lectures, public talks, conferences,...

, London.

Background

Coward decided, in August 1953, to base a musical on Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

's play, Lady Windermere's Fan

Lady Windermere's Fan

Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James's Theatre in London. The play was first published in 1893...

; he worked on it until January 1954. He delegated the first draft of the script to his assistant Cole Lesley. Lesley "cut out the more glaringly melodramatic of Wilde's lines and divided the remainder into sections ending with a suitable 'cue for a song'" "I know that it is very good indeed," wrote Coward of the finished piece, "I have... turned out some of the best lyrics I have ever written" Coward worked on the piece during his customary winter holiday in Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

 in December 1953. His music director, Norman Hackforth, flew to Jamaica to help him finish the score after Christmas.

Coward cast Mary Ellis in the leading role of Mrs Erlynne, unwisely accepting without audition her assurance that, in her late fifties, she was singing as well as ever. Hackforth soon realised that she could not adequately sing Coward's difficult music for the role. In Coward's absence, Hackforth reluctantly cut the most challenging music for the twelve-week tour opening in Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

 on 1 March 1954, but he was still dismayed by Ellis's delivery of the music. Coward returned to England at the end of March and saw the production at Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

 on 1 April. He was distressed by what he saw and heard: "the absence of style in the direction... a great deal of the performance was inaudible.... Vanessa [Lee] sang divinely but acted poorly. Mary Ellis acted well but sang so badly I could hardly bear it. The orchestra was appalling, the orchestrations beneath contempt, and poor Norman [Hackforth] conducted like a stick of wet asparagus.".

Coward immediately began major rewriting, reorganization, reorchestration and cutting of the show. He fired his old friend Hackforth as musical director. Hackforth remembered, "If [Coward] had struck me across the face and told me I was no bloody good it would have been less painful!" Coward engaged Phil Green to reorchestrate the score and revised much of Helpmann's production, but he was still "terribly disappointed about After the Ball. The whole project has been sabotaged by Mary not being able to sing it. Unfortunately she is a strong personality and plays it well, otherwise I would of course have had her out of the cast weeks ago." He was still more forthright to his friends Alfred Lunt

Alfred Lunt

Alfred Lunt was an American stage director and actor, often identified for a long-time professional partnership with his wife, actress Lynn Fontanne...

 and Lynn Fontanne

Lynn Fontanne

Lynn Fontanne was a British actress and major stage star in the United States for over 40 years. She teamed with her husband Alfred Lunt.She lived in the United States for more than 60 years but never relinquished her British citizenship. Lunt and Fontanne shared a special Tony Award in 1970...

: "I have been having a terrible time with After the Ball, mainly on account of Mary Ellis's singing voice which, to coin a phrase, sounds like someone fucking the cat. I know that your sense of the urbane, sophisticated Coward wit will appreciate this simile."
In London, reviews were mixed: "The daily Press was idiotic as usual but well-disposed and good box-office. [The Sunday papers] are, on the whole, very good, particularly Harold Hobson

Harold Hobson

Sir Harold Hobson was an influential English drama critic and author.He was born in Thorpe Hesley near Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England and read History at Oxford University. He was an assistant literary editor for the Sunday Times from 1944 and later became its drama critic...

 in the Sunday Times." The show ran from 10 June until 20 November 1954.

In retrospect, the director, Robert Helpmann, wondered whether the attempt to combine Wilde and Coward was ever likely to have worked:

You would have thought that a play of Wilde's with music by Noel Coward should be marvellous, but I suddenly realised at the first rehearsal it was like having two funny people at a dinner party. Everything that Noel sent up, Wilde was sentimental about, and everything that Wilde sent up Noel was sentimental about. It was two different points of view and it didn't work."

Synopsis

In 1899 London, the upper crust gather at Lord and Lady Windermere's London house for a spectacular ball. Lady Windermere at first ignores the gossip that she has a rival for her husband's affections, an older woman called Mrs Erlynne, but she eventually confronts Lord Windermere with the accusation. He admits that he has been paying money to Mrs Erlynne but denies that he has had an affair with her and refuses to say more. In fact, Mrs Erlynne is Lady Windermere's mother, whom her daughter believes to be dead, and Lord Windermere is paying her money to keep her from revealing the relationship.

Lady Windermere, still believing the worst of her husband, is tempted by the amorous advances of the debonair Lord Darlington and agrees to visit him at his flat. Mrs Erlynne, learning of this before Lord Windermere, rushes to Darlington's flat to prevent her daughter from committing a destructive folly similar to that which she herself committed twenty years earlier. Without letting Lady Windermere know that they are mother and daughter, Mrs Erlynne persuades her that a liaison with Lord Darlington would be disastrous, but before they can leave, Lord Windermere arrives. The ladies conceal themselves, but Lord Windermere discovers the fan that he has recently given his wife as a birthday present and demands to know if Lord Darlington has Lady Windermere in his rooms. To prevent the exposure of Lady Windermere, Mrs Erlynne enters, saying that it is she who is under Lord Darlington's roof and must have picked up Lady Windermere's fan by mistake. Lady Windermere's reputation is saved, but Mrs Erlynne's is compromised. Fortunately, her admirer, Lord Augustus Lorton, is convinced of her honour and proposes marriage. The Windermeres are reconciled, and all ends happily. Lady Windermere never learns that Mrs Erlynne is her mother.

Musical numbers

• Oh, What A Century It's Been
• I Knew That You Would Be My Love
• Mr. Hopper's Chanty
• Sweet Day
• Quartette
• Crème De La Crème
• Light Is The Heart
• Why Is It The Woman Who Pays?
• London At Night
• Aria
• May I Have The Pleasure?
• All My Life Ago
• Faraway Land
• Something On A Tray
• Clear Bright Morning

In his book My Life with Noel Coward, Graham Payn reproduced the lyrics for two major numbers featuring Mrs Erlynne which had to be cut because Mary Ellis could not manage them: Mrs Erlynne's entrance in Act I and an aria in the first act finale.

Productions

After the original run, there has been only one professional revival in the West End

West End theatre

West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

, a 1999 Coward centenary production at the Peacock Theatre

Peacock Theatre

The Peacock Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, located in Portugal Street, near Aldwych. The 999-seat house is owned by, and comprises part of the London School of Economics and Political Science campus, who utilise the theatre for lectures, public talks, conferences,...

, London, conducted by John McGlinn

John McGlinn

John Alexander McGlinn III was an American conductor and musical theatre archivist. He was one of the principal proponents of authentic studio cast recordings of Broadway musicals, using original orchestrations and vocal arrangements.-Biography:John Alexander McGlinn III was born in Bryn Mawr,...

. Casts of the original production and the revival are given below.

Role	1954 cast	1999 centenary cast
Duchess of Berwick	Irene Browne Irene Browne Irene Browne was an English stage and film actress and singer who appeared in plays and musicals such as No, No, Nanette. Later in her career, she became particularly associated with the works of Noel Coward and acted in films....	Penelope Keith Penelope Keith Penelope Anne Constance Keith, CBE, DL is an English actress.Having started her television career in the 1950s, Penelope Keith became a household name in the United Kingdom in the 1970s when she played Margo Leadbetter in the sitcom The Good Life...
Lady Plymdale	Lois Green	Rosie Ashe
Lady Stutfield	Pam Marmont	Fiona Kimm Fiona Kimm Fiona Kimm, the distinguished British Mezzo Soprano, is known for a wide ranging operatic and concert repertoire.-Education and early career:...
Lady Jedburgh	Betty Felstead	Frances McCafferty
Mr Dumby	Dennis Bowen	Christopher Saunders
Cecil Graham	Tom Gill	Tom McVeigh
Mrs Hurst-Green	Marion Grimaldi
Lord Augustus Lorton	Donald Scott	Gordon Sandison
Lord Windermere	Peter Graves Peter Graves, 8th Baron Graves Peter George Wellesley Graves, 8th Baron Graves , was a British actor.Born in London, Graves was the son of Henry Algernon Claude Graves, 7th Baron Graves. Admiral Thomas Graves, 1st Baron Graves, was his great-great-great-grandfather...	Eric Roberts
Lady Windermere	Vanessa Lee	Linda Kitchen
Mr Hopper	Graham Payn Graham Payn Graham Payn was a South African-born English actor and singer, also known for being the life partner of the playwright Noël Coward. Beginning as a boy soprano, Payn later made a career as a singer and actor in the works of Coward and others...	George Dvorsky
Lord Darlington	Shamus Locke	Karl Daymond
Lady Agatha Carlisle	Patricia Cree	Nina Young
Mrs Erlynne	Mary Ellis Mary Ellis Mary Ellis was a long-lived star of the British stage best known for her roles in the genre of musical theatre. After appearing with the Metropolitan Opera beginning in 1918, later appearing opposite Enrico Caruso, she acted on Broadway, creating the title role in Rose Marie...	Marie McLaughlin Marie McLaughlin Marie McLaughlin is a Scottish operatic soprano.A light lyric soprano, McLaughlin is noted for her performances as Susanna , Zerlina , Despina , Norina , Marzelline , Nannetta , Micaëla and Tytania Marie McLaughlin (born Hamilton, South Lanarkshire 2 November 1954) is a Scottish operatic...