Red Peppers, described as "an interlude with music", is a short comic play in two scenes byNoël Coward. It is one of ten short plays that make upTonight at 8.30, a cycle written to be performed in groups of three plays across three evenings. The original production, starring Coward andGertrude Lawrence played in a pre-London tour, and then theWest End, and finally New York, in 1935–1937.Red Peppers has been revived periodically and has been adapted for the cinema and television.
The play depicts a second-ratemusic hall double act, a husband and wife team, who perform two musical numbers, in between which they bicker in their dressing room and quarrel with colleagues.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Coward wrote a succession of hits, ranging from theoperettaBitter Sweet (1929) and the epicCavalcade (1931), requiring a large cast, gargantuan sets and a complex hydraulic stage, to the intimate comediesPrivate Lives (1930), in which Coward starred alongsideGertrude Lawrence, andDesign for Living (1932).[1] Coward said that afterPrivate Lives, he felt that the public enjoyed seeing him and Lawrence together on stage, and so he wrote the play cycleTonight at 8.30 as "acting, singing, and dancing vehicles for Gertrude Lawrence and myself".[2]
In the programme for the London run Coward wrote:
[T]he idea of presenting three short plays in an evening instead of one long one is far from original. In fact, if one looks back over the years, one finds that the "triple bill" formula has been used, with varying degrees of success, since the earliest days of the theatre. Latterly, however – that is during the last quarter of a century – it has fallen from favour. Occasionally still a curtain-raiser appears in the provinces but wearing a sadly hang-dog expression, because it knows only too well, poor thing, that it would not be there at all were the main attraction of the evening long enough.[…]
A short play, having a great advantage over a long one in that it can sustain a mood without technical creaking or overpadding, deserves a better fate, and if by careful writing, acting, and producing I can do a little towards reinstating it in its rightful pride, I shall have achieved one of my more sentimental ambitions.[3]
All the plays in the cycle starred Coward andGertrude Lawrence. Coward directed the plays and wrote the words and music for songs in four of them. In this play, billed as "an interlude with music",[4] Coward and Lawrence's characters, George and Lily Pepper, sing the comic duets, "Has Anybody Seen Our Ship?" and "Men About Town".[5]
Red Peppers was the third of theTonight at 8.30 cycle to be presented. It opened at theOpera House, Manchester on 15 October 1935, preceded by two other plays fromTonight at 8.30:We Were Dancing andThe Astonished Heart.[6]
Tonight at 8.30 opened in London on 9 January 1936 at thePhoenix Theatre,[7] In the first programme of three plays,Red Peppers concluded the evening, preceded byFamily Album andThe Astonished Heart.[4]
After a try-out inBoston, the Broadway opening took place on 24 November 1936 at theNational Theatre, again starring Coward and Lawrence.Red Peppers was included in the second of the three programmes in the cycle, along withThe Astonished Heart andHands Across the Sea.[8]
George and Lily Pepper are a husband-and-wife act touring in provincialmusic hall. They are seen first onstage, and then in their dressing room, and finally onstage again. They begin in a comedy number, dressed as naval ratings, singing "Has Anybody Seen our Ship?" – two sailors after a spree:
We've lost our way
And we've lost our pay,
And to make the thing complete,
We've been and gone and lost the bloomin' fleet!
Their exit dance is marred when Lily drops her telescope and stops to retrieve it before hurrying after George. In their dressing room they argue as they get ready for their second slot. While the next act is on stage – a non-musical number by a fading West End actress, Mabel Grace – the Peppers receive a visit from the theatre's musical director, Bert Bentley, who asks them to speed up their sailor number. Lily, who blames his over-brisk tempo for her mishap with the telescope, is incensed and a loud row ensues. It is broken off when the call-boy warns Bentley that he is due back in the orchestra pit. The scene ends with a blackout.
The lights come up again revealing the Peppers getting into their white ties and tails for their second number. The theatre manager enters, clearly briefed by Bentley, and a further row develops, interrupted by Mabel Grace complaining of the noise. The tumult is interrupted by the call boy who summons the Peppers for their second number. The curtain falls, and then rises on George and Lily's "dude" number. Their song goes well enough, but for the tap-dance with which the act ends, Bentley vengefully increases the tempo to an impossible speed, George slips and falls and Lily hurls her top hat at Bentley, shouting, "You great drunken fool!". The curtain falls "amid discord".[9]
Red Peppers has been revived as part of complete, or near-complete cycles ofTonight at 8.30 by the Antaeus Company in Los Angeles in 2007, theShaw Festival, Canada, in 2009,[10] and theJermyn Street Theatre, London in 2018.[11]Other revivals ofRed Peppers, together with other plays from the cycle, have included a 1947–1948 American tour with Lawrence andGraham Payn, and London productions starringMillicent Martin andGary Bond (1970) andJohn Standing andEstelle Kohler (1981).[12]
For the cinemaAnthony Pelissier, who had appeared in the original stage production ofTonight at 8.30, directedMeet Me Tonight, (released in the US asTonight at 8:30) for which Coward wrote the screenplay adaptingRed Peppers and two other plays from the cycle.Ted Ray andKay Walsh played the Peppers.[13]
There were television productions in 1937 (BBC, withRichard Murdoch and Marjorie Sandford);[14] 1938 (BBC, withRichard Haydn andPatricia Hayes); 1948 (BBC, with Graham Payn andPatricia Burke);[15] 1951 (CBS, withRex Harrison andBeatrice Lillie); 1954 (NBC, withMartyn Green andGinger Rogers);[16] 1958 (BBC, withCharlie Chester andEleanor Summerfield);[17] 1960 (CBS, withArt Carney andElaine Stritch); 1969 (BBC, withBruce Forsyth andDora Bryan) and 1991 (BBC, as part of a cycle ofTonight at 8.30, withAnthony Newley andJoan Collins).[16]
In January 1936 Coward and Lawrence recorded a version of the play forHis Master's Voice, including both the songs in full, and edited dialogue in between. The Phoenix Theatre Orchestra was conducted by Clifford Greenwood. The recording has been reissued on LP, CD and online.[18] Coward and Lawrence also performed an audio version for American radio, minus the final song, on the 3 December 1936 edition ofRudy Vallee'sRoyal Gelatin Hour, a recording of which still survives.[19]
Coward wrote of the piece, "Red Peppers is a vaudeville sketch sandwiched in between two parodies of music hall songs. We always enjoyed playing it and the public always enjoyed watching us play it, which, of course, was highly satisfactory".[20] Coward's friend and confidanteLynn Fontanne, who had commented adversely onWe Were Dancing, was much more taken withRed Peppers, finding it "very fine and very funny. Their utter third-ratedness is so awfully pathetic. You know exactly why (aside from the pitiful business of their act) they have never been and never could be successful."[21] At the time of the first production,The Times thoughtRed Peppers the most successful of the plays in the cycle.[22] The criticCharles Morgan wrote, "The theatrical success of the evening belongs without question toRed Peppers … Here, with quarrels and back-chat, Mr Coward the dramatist is comfortably within his range, and Mr Coward the actor, and above all the dancer, knows how, with Miss Lawrence, to make the most of his own swift nonsense."[23]
