Noel Coward
A book critic in Sunday's SF Chronicle, found an intriguing message on gayness in a new compendium of Noel Coward's writings. Here's a bit of it:
"...but compare[d] to the [play] 'Private Lives' or to the famous passage on sex -- not homosexuality or heterosexuality, but sexuality in all its glory and torment -- from his most autobiographical play 'Present Laughter' with its heterosexual protagonist juggling past, present and possibly future amours. Or to the marvelous "Shadow Play," a one-act masterpiece, described in this Reader as 'the most technically ambitious piece of writing he ever attempted. 'Shadow Play' -- apart from being a [straight] love story -- deals with the nature of time and memory...
"In fact, 'Shadow Play' is not merely ambitious in its conception but also breathtaking in its realization, as daringly experimental as anything written by denizens of the avant-garde, yet at the same time so accessible. Brilliantly imaginative, blending music and song, fantasy and reality, it reveals, perhaps more than anything else Coward wrote, the truly masterly quality of his talent, which was for much, much more than merely to amuse."
The critic, Martin Rubin, is a biographer. The whole piece can be found on http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/02/RV681GV8RF.DTL
"...but compare[d] to the [play] 'Private Lives' or to the famous passage on sex -- not homosexuality or heterosexuality, but sexuality in all its glory and torment -- from his most autobiographical play 'Present Laughter' with its heterosexual protagonist juggling past, present and possibly future amours. Or to the marvelous "Shadow Play," a one-act masterpiece, described in this Reader as 'the most technically ambitious piece of writing he ever attempted. 'Shadow Play' -- apart from being a [straight] love story -- deals with the nature of time and memory...
"In fact, 'Shadow Play' is not merely ambitious in its conception but also breathtaking in its realization, as daringly experimental as anything written by denizens of the avant-garde, yet at the same time so accessible. Brilliantly imaginative, blending music and song, fantasy and reality, it reveals, perhaps more than anything else Coward wrote, the truly masterly quality of his talent, which was for much, much more than merely to amuse."
The critic, Martin Rubin, is a biographer. The whole piece can be found on http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/02/RV681GV8RF.DTL