Coward the Playwright by Lahr John;

Author:Lahr, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 1982-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The joke in all Coward’s other major comedies is the central characters’ staggering impoliteness, which they somehow manage to get away with. In Hands Across the Sea, the situation is reversed. The Gilpins want to be polite; but their instincts for generosity have been atrophied by selfishness. From the outset of the play, ‘Piggie’ and ‘Peter’ Gilpin are vague about the Rawlingsons whose name ‘Piggie’ sees on the telephone pad and whom she realizes have been invited to the house.

PIGGIE: … My God!

PETER: What is it?

PIGGIE: The Rawlingsons.

PETER: Who the hell are they?

PIGGIE: I’d forgotten all about them.

‘Piggie’ wants to repay hospitality; but her instincts for the right social response are more acute than her ability to respond to people. She spends anxious minutes on the phone trying to hustle up a social agenda. ‘Mother and father and daughter’, she tells Maud, the first of many disembodied characters at the other end of the phone. ‘You must remember - pretty girl with bad legs - No - they didn’t have a son - we swore we’d give them a lovely time when they came home on leave - I know they didn’t have a son, that was those other people in Penang.’

In the pauses and detours of the conversation, Maud’s questions, her personality, her turn of mind are apparent without ever being seen. While ‘Piggie’ rushes off to change, the Gilpins’ entourage as well as the strangers enter. The Wadhursts have also been invited to the Gilpin house and been forgotten about. The stage directions characterize the Wadhursts as ‘timid’ and Mr, Burnham as ‘non-descript’. They sink into the background as the voluble old friends and the din of telephone conversations take over.

The telephone dominates the party, at once a symbol of the connections and the isolation of the Gilpins. The old Gilpin friends swoop down on the receiver to hoot and holler about their lives. Occasionally, social conversation spills over into the telephone conversation, and then back again. The effect is dreamlike and surreal:

PIGGIE: How much do torpedoes cost each?

BOGEY: What? - (at telephone) - wait a minute, Piggie’s yelling at me -

PIGGIE: Torpedoes - (She makes a descriptive gesture.)

BOGEY: Oh, thousands and thousands - terribly expensive things - ask Peter - (at telephone) - If I do bring him. you’ll have to be frightfully nice to him …

Sometimes the telephone-talkers break off to announce bits of gossip or get unlikely information to feed to the invisible person at the other end of the line. In the process a whole cast of unseen characters and their world of privilege comes to life: Laura Mersham wrestling with a Maharajah all the way to Newmarket on the front seat of his car; Nina’s ‘Indian ding-dong’, Vera’s scene with Lady Borrowdale, Freda Brathurst’s naughty son, Boodie’s return. The room resounds with talk of these people and their antics. They are real but unseen, while the Wadhursts and Mr. Burnham remain seen but unreal. Although the telephone conversations are obviously monologues, Coward writes them with such panache that they seem to be duologues.

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