Like The Beatles, Charlie Chaplin, and the royal family, Noël Coward remains one of Britain’s greatest and most enduring entertainment exports. Even though he died just over 50 years ago, his scripts are still lighting up stages and screens.
True, his hundreds of songs are more quipped and quoted than karaoke-ed these days. But seeing Coward and his gymnastic eyebrows singing Mad Dogs and Englishmen to a 1950s Las Vegas crowd is but one of many entertaining they don’t-make-’em-like-they-used-to moments in this economical, if slightly pat look at a man of many talents.
As well as writing, they included acting, singing, cabaret, directing and, possibly his most enduring, a gift for epitomising a certain kind of Englishness.
There’s plenty in this that reinforces the image of Coward, as the dressing-gowned dandy dashing out another drawing-room drama while humming another witty ditty between drags on his cigarette holder and the first cocktail of the day.
It’s also something of a mad dash through his 73 years, told chronologically, which can make it feel like a highlights reel for a more substantial series. And it leans heavily on the movies he wrote and starred in, some scenes reminding that as a screen actor, it was a good thing he had a trade or two to fall back on.
The unfurling decades do occasionally get snippets of a television-era Coward on talk shows saying droll things about his past and alluding to his sexuality.
It’s narrated by Alan Cumming and has Rupert Everett reading from Coward’s memoirs as part of the efforts to be a benefit-of-hindsight examination of Coward’s closeted life. But it still feels restrained in examining that, while drawing some glib conclusions. What sounds like manic and depressive episodes are explained away in the narration as being due to Coward’s fear of being outed in Britain “and being constantly on his guard”. The abundant home movie footage suggests this wasn’t always so, as do many of his later plays.
But Mad About the Boy is still a very good reminder – or for some, a primer – of the remarkable, colourful creative life of the man they called “the Master”. It’s not in the film but Coward once said that was a reference to him being “a Jack of all trades but a master of none”.
And the film is also a reminder that for much of the 20th century, there were other rules about being famous that are much different to now. Back then, great celebrity, it seems, was actually bestowed on those with great talent. Coward had a few to spare and didn’t he just know it?
Rating out of 5: ★★★½
Mad About The Boy: The Noël Coward story, directed by Barnaby Thompson, is in cinemas now.
