COWARD, Noel.

£500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

To-Night at 8.30. Plays. First editions, first impressions, signed by the playwright on the title pages of vols 1-2. The original production starred Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence and premiered on 9 January 1936 at the Phoenix Theatre, London.This copy is from the theatre collection of Clive Hirschhorn (b. 1940) who reviewed the collection in the Sunday Express and whose ownership inscriptions are pencilled on the front pastedowns, dated 1988.Coward wrote these nine one-act plays to perform alongside Gertrude Lawrence. As Hirschhorn writes, "though they did only two shows together - the superbly crafted Private Lives and Tonight At 8.30 - Coward's association with the 'imperishable' Gertie brought out the best in him and endures to this day". One of the plays, Still Life, was later adapted into the award-winning film Brief Encounter (1945).

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