Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Geri Essendine in her New York City apartment in Present Laughter. Picture: Simon Annand
IN 2019, in North Yorkshire director Matthew Warchus’s take on Noel Coward’s 1939 study of the temptations and pitfalls of theatrical celebrity, Andrew Scott portrayed vainglorious actor Garry Essendine as gay at the Old Vic.
Now, in her second re-invention and re-imagination of a male character, following her portrayal of Shylock in the Black Shirt and Nazi-shadowed The Merchant Of Venice 1936 that played York Theatre Royal in November 2023, Tracy-Ann Oberman transforms Garry into Geri: Geri With A G, as the poster in her New York City apartment declares (presumably in a nod to Liza Minnelli and Bob Fosse’s 1972 musical documentary Liza With A Z).
Living opposite the newly opened Studio 54, whose muffled disco groves can be heard when she opens one of her multiple windows of her white-walled abode, Oberman’s Geri is a “hugely successful actress and singer”, a grand-standing English ex-pat with a coterie of fans, friends and hangers-on, who has clung on to being 39 for the best part of a decade, although she talks of her face needing work.
On the cusp of heading off on tour to Australia (rather than Africa in Coward’s original), and still craving the chance to play the elusive Hedda Gabler, she is besieged by would-be, definitely much younger lovers (Seb Carrington’s naive, besotted David Stillington and Kit Young’s cynical, deceitful Johannes) and an obsessed young playwright (Eva Feiler’s Rosina Maule, irritating to Geri and audience alike, alas).
Around her too buzz her humorously eccentric spiritualist (Gabriella Foley’s Miss Erikson), house servant-cum-bouncer (Perry Williams’s ultra-cool Fred), friend Morris (Jonathan Tafler) and his wife Henrietta (Charlotte Randle).
Present Laughter director Lindsay Posner
They are but drones by comparison with the comic elan of James Dreyfus’s Monty, Geri’s eloquent, exasperated secretary, and Adrian Lukis’s Len, her elegant, arch, implacable ex-husband, still ever present as they never got round to completing the divorce papers.
Such experienced hands, Dreyfus and Lukis are operating in a superior acting stratosphere to the touring company’s younger charges, comfortable with Coward’s waspish wit, with better timing than the rest, and bringing out the best too in Oberman, whose Geri is all Seventies’ blonde glamour, at once tiring of the fame game yet fearful of loneliness and still craving being desired. Whenever soul-searching threatens to consume her, throwaway sex beckons again: as much coward as Coward.
In Oberman’s transformations, the secretary’s change from Monica to Monty and the ex-wife’s switch from Liz to Len are by far the most effective, in part because of Dreyfus and Lukis’s comic prowess, but certainly Carrington, Young and Feiler fare less well, to the detriment of the play’s impact. The first half drags its feet, the second still lacks fire for too long until the sting is drawn at the finale.
Remembered in York for his Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre productions of Romeo And Juliet and Richard III in 2018 at the Eye of York, director Lindsay Posner elicits more style than substance overall, exemplified by Peter McKintosh’s set and costume designs, featuring two faux portraits by Geri’s Studio 54 friend Andy Warhol.
Like in those Pop Art portraits, there should be more going on beneath the surface, although it is striking that while we never see Essendine’s Geri on stage, she is always acting.
Theatre Royal Bath Productions & Augusta Productions present Noel Coward’s Present Laughter, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Geri Essendine and Seb Carrington’s David Stillington in Present Laughter, on tour at Grand Opera House, York. Picture Simon Annand
THEATRE Royal Bath Productions and Augusta Productions re-present Noël Coward’s provocative comedy Present Laughter in a new version, re-imagined by actress, playwright and columnist Tracy-Ann Oberman, at the Grand Opera House, York, from tomorrow (6/10/2026).
Last seen in York as Shylock in her revamp of The Merchant Of Venice 1936 at the Theatre Royal in November 2023, on her return she is playing Geri Essendine: the first time the character has been performed by a female lead, after being originated on stage by Coward himself in 1939 and traditionally being portrayed as Garry Essendine.
Andrew Scott played self-obsessed actor Essendine as a gay man at the Old Vic, London, in North Yorkshireman Matthew Warchus’s 2019 production. Now comes EastEnders, Friday Night Dinner, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actress Oberman’s reinvention of Coward’s study of the temptations and pitfalls of theatrical celebrity in a reflection on fame, desire and loneliness, spun inside a “chaotic whirlwind of love, sex, panic and soul-searching” (as the Old Vic publicity put it).
Re-located from London to 1970s’ New York, Oberman’s Geri Essendine is a hugely successful actress who has been 39 for the best part of a decade. Her personality, wit and charm have earned her a legion of devoted fans, young and old, and a coterie of friends, acquaintances and hangers-on.
Set and costume designer Peter McKintosh’s design for Geri Essendine’s apartment in 1977 New York, featuring pastiche “Andy Warhol” portraits of actress Geri. Picture: Simon Annand
On the cusp of departing for a tour of Africa, Geri finds herself besieged by a bevy of would-be lovers, her long-suffering secretary, estranged husband and an obsessed young playwright. Will she ever disentangle herself from their tightening clutches and incessant demands? What’s more, deep down, does she really want to?
“Present Laughter has always been one of my favourite plays,” said Oberman, when announcing the tour in June. “But when I looked at it more closely, I saw something beyond the sparkling comedy. I saw a portrait of the cost of celebrity — of a fragile ego trapped inside a gilded cage, desperately trying to hold back the one thing that catches up with every icon: time, and the fear of becoming irrelevant.”
“The moment I flipped the gender, the stakes suddenly became even more fascinating,” noted Oberman, who is working with director Lindsay Posner for the third time, having played Belinda Blair alongside Felicity Kendal’s Dotty Otley in the 40th anniversary production of Michael Frayn’s farce Noises Off at the Phoenix Theatre, London, in 2022-2023 and appeared in Ryan Craig’s The Holy Rosenbergs at the Renier Chocolate Factory, London, from late-February to early-May this year.
“I think hopefully Tracy trusts the fact I can bring out her full potential as an actress, and we have that ‘shorthand’ between us that means we don’t have to tread as carefully as you would with anyone you don’t know already,” says Lindsay, whose directorial skills will be familiar to York audiences from his 2018 pop-up Elizabethan theatre productions of Richard III and Romeo And Juliet, set in 1980s’ Italy, for Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre at the Eye of York.
Present Laughter director Lindsay Posner
“I know how to connect with her and work with her big personality,” he adds. “Tracy approached me and floated her concept, asking me if I thought it would work – and I did. One of the reasons I hadn’t done Present Laughter before was because the play had started to feel politically dodgy, watching an older man seducing women in their 20s. That would now be creepy and tedious.
“Tracy’s idea liberated the play and allowed it to be performed again with a whole new resonance, just as the Old Vic liberated it by making Essendine a gay man, where Andrew Scott played him.”
Lindsay continues: “Updating it to the 1970s and setting it in New York liberates it from people’s preconceptions of Coward being all about mahogany furniture and people wafting cigarette holders around.
“Now, Geri is living in a New York apartment opposite Studio 54, where Andy Warhol has become a friend and has painted her portraits on the apartment walls. In some ways, Geri feels more isolated and in some ways she’s trying to blend in. It’s made her more hedonistic and sexually promiscuous.”
The poster for Present Laughter starring Tracy-Ann Oberman
In Lindsay’s verdict, Oberman’s take on Present Laughter is “still 96 per cent Coward”. “We’ve been faithful to Coward but changed certain names, place names and settings,, but the structure is still totally Coward and most of the language too,” he says.
“I do feel that if you just still set it in the 1930s with a woman as the lead, it wouldn’t have worked. You have to update it. I think it now gives it a slightly more substantial resonance in terms of sexual politics.”
The play’s profusion of “talking in the first half before becoming a farce in the second” makes Present Laughter “very difficult to direct”. “Structurally it’s not as adept as some of Coward’s other plays,” says Lindsay. “You have to find the balance to keep it funny and interesting while sticking to the structure.
“The interesting thing about the play existing in the Thirties and well as the Seventies is that it allows you to question boundaries between people, to think about truth telling, and for Geri it’s about identity and identifying true feelings from false, both as an actor and in real life.
“Present Laughter has always been one of my favourite plays,” says Tracy-Ann Oberman. Picture: Simon Annand
“In this play, there are people who are performing all the time. Geri is forced to perform [off stage] as she’s a celebrity and is expected to do that, which makes her more lonely, and that’s enhanced by bringing it into the 1970s.”
Theatre Royal Bath Productions and Augusta Productions present Noël Coward’s Present Laughter, Grand Opera House, York, October 6 to 10, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Did you know:
LINDSAY Posner is at the helm of Present Laughter after his West End triumphs directing Noises Off, starring Felicity Kendal, A View From The Bridge, starring Dominic West, and The Deep Blue Sea, starring Tamsin Greig.
Posner is directing the world premiere of Park Myung-Sung and Seensee Company’s production of Nero (book and lyrics by Steven Sater and music by Duncan Sheik, the Tony Award-winning team behind Spring Awakening) at Southwark Playhouse Elephant, London, from November 2 to December 5
Power, fame and excess combine in this new musical that reimagines the notorious figure of Nero for the modern age. Andrew Barth Feldman will play the Roman emperor who changed history forever. ruling from AD54 until his suicide in AD68.
Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Geri Essendine and James Dreyfus’s Monty in a publicity shot for Present Laughter
Who will be joining Tracy-Ann Oberman in Lindsay Posner’s cast for Present Laughter?
JAMES Dreyfus will play Monty. Dreyfus is known for major roles in television sitcoms Gimme Gimme Gimme and The Thin Blue Line, as well as Mount Pleasant, more recently. He won the 1998 Olivier Award for Best Supporting Performance in a musical for Lady In The Dark at the National Theatre; other notable stage roles include The Producers and Cabaret.
Adrian Lukis will play Len. Screen credits include Pride And Prejudice, The Crown, Judge John Deed, Peak Practice, and Black Mirror. His theatre work includes The Price in the West End, Orson’s Shadow at Southwark Playhouse, Being Mr Wickham – which he co-wrote and has performed in London, New York and on tour, with Original Theatre Company, playing the Haunted Season at York Theatre Royal in October in October 2021.
From February 27 to May 2 this year, he appeared in Lindsay Posner’s production of The Holy Rosenbergs at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Luk
In the company too will be Richenda Carey as Lady Saltburn, Seb Carrington as David Stillington, Eva Feiler as Rosina Maule, Gabriella Foley as Miss Erikson, Charlotte Randle as Henrietta, Jonathan Tafler as Morris, Perry Williams as Fred and Kit Youngas Johannes.
Tracy-Ann Oberman on ‘flipping the gender’from Garry to Geri Essendine in Noël Coward’s comedy Present Laughter
Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Geri Essendine in Present Laughter: “For stars like Geri and her gang, the party is never just a party,” she says. Picture: Simon Annand
“THERE is a beautifully preserved myth surrounding Noël Coward. For many, he exists in a world of silk dressing gowns, perfectly enunciated vowels and silver cigarette cases.
“Present Laughter has always been one of my favourite plays. But when I looked at it more closely, I saw something beyond the sparkling comedy.
“I saw a portrait of the cost of celebrity — of a fragile ego trapped inside a gilded cage, desperately trying to hold back the one thing that catches up with every icon: time, and the fear of becoming irrelevant.
“In Coward’s original 1939 play, Garry Essendine is an ageing stage idol, prone to theatrical tantrums and ill-advised affairs, while those around him manage his chaos. But the moment I flipped the gender, the stakes suddenly became even more fascinating.
“Enter Geri Essendine – who has been thirty-nine for the best part of a decade. The idea of a badly behaved middle-aged actress, conducting herself every bit as outrageously as her male counterparts, immediately intrigued me.
“I thought of Mae West, who wrote and produced her own work and famously enjoyed the company of many of her leading men. Ithought of Joan Collins and her uniquely British glamour, of Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli. Women with agency, self-belief, power and unafraid to use their glamour and influence.
“But would it work in pre-war London? Or could another setting honour Coward’s original while allowing us to look at it through a different lens, without losing any of its wit, farce and brilliance?
“I found myself drawn to New York in 1977, at the height of Studio 54. The endless queues outside, the celebrities gliding into those hallowed VIP spaces (sometimes on horseback), where strong charismatic women were centre stage in a world of glamour, excess and an intoxicating sense of belonging to ‘the in crowd’. Where bad behaviour and egotismwas rife across all genders.
“And I began to wonder: what if Geri were an expatriate British actress? A hugely successful West End star who had arrived in America 15 years earlier with her chosen family – her dashing ex-husband, her fiercely loyal secretary and her producers – all determined that she would conquer Broadway and make all their fortunes.
“Geri needs them desperately, and they need her. Without each other, can they even exist? Can Monty, Len, Henrietta, Morris – and Geri herself – survive the arrival of the handsome Johannes, whose presence threatens to blow “the firm” apart?
“Get close to Geri and you enter the inner sanctum. Here is a woman who knows minor royalty, whose intelligence and talent have made her irresistible to everyone around her, and whose star power still burns brightly.
“Huge thanks must go to Alan Brodie and the Noël Coward Estate for giving me permission to explore the idea, and to Lindsay Posner, Danny Moar and Simon Beresford for encouraging me to see whether it might work.
“Setting Present Laughter in the world of Studio 54 throws a fresh light on questions that feel surprisingly contemporary. In an industry that has so often been harsher on women than men, ageing and relevance are notsimply matters of vanity. For performers whose lives have been shaped by applause and attention, the fear of losing the spotlight can feel overwhelming.
“But we haven’t broken Noël Coward’s masterpiece. Quite the opposite. Beneath the mirrored disco ball, Present Laughter remains what it has always been: a dazzling comedy about love, vanity, friendship and thestrange business of being adored.
“Because for stars like Geri and her gang, the party is never just a party.”
Double trouble: Daniel Rainford’s Tim Allgood and Matthew Kelly’s Selsdon Mowbray in Noises Off, on tour at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Pamela Raith
THIS revival of Michael Frayn’s beloved fractious farce arrives in York in the wake of Mischief’s Magic Goes Wrong, The Comedy About A Bank Robbery and, twice, The Play That Goes Wrong.
If you loved the madcap malarky of those Mischief-making feats of furiously fast physical theatre, take a step back in time to savour the abiding joys of Frayn’s 1982 comedy, now an avuncular forerunner that still brings the house -and stage – down in 2023, 23 years after being elected one of 100 best plays of the 20th century in the National Theatre’s Millennial retrospective.
Frayn, Guardian feature writer-turned playwright, has tweaked his script for the 40th anniversary tour, now on its second leg with only Matthew Kelly reprising his role from last year’s travels.
He may be spotted off-stage with a walking stick, nursing an injured knee from his exertions on two new hips, but once the performance starts, he “feels like a gazelle” at 73, his burglar character leaping through a broken window again and again.
Frayn revels in taking the Michael out of the fallibility, frailties, foibles and luvvie excesses of the acting profession – sometimes accused of taking itself too seriously – but been-there, done that actors love it. Felicity Kendal was in last year’s company; now Kelly’s old thespian lush, Selsdon Mowbray, is joined by such touring campaign veterans as Liza Goddard, Simon Coates, Lucy Robinson and Dan Fredenburgh (although Mark Middleton is ably deputising for him all week as the increasingly vexed Garry Lejeune).
Frayn puts the worst traditions of touring theatre to the sword, from flings and fallouts to coarse acting and stage calamities, over three acts of a farcically bad play within his very good one. The “bad” is Nothing On, a very British trouser-dropping farce with jokes cornier than a cob and doors galore – seven in all – but no escape from the hapless, hopeless show or tour contract as it hobbles from fraught, fractured rehearsals to a last night from hell after 12 weeks for its cast of has-beens, never-beens and desperate newcomers.
As a pleasingly full house looks on, we join the cast of Nothing On at a technical rehearsal so behind schedule there will be no dress rehearsal, everyone playing catch-up from the off. Oxbridge-educated director Lloyd Dallas (Simon Shepherd, all in black with a splenetic mood to match) is already dreaming of his next engagement (Shakespeare’s Richard III in Wales).
In the meantime, he has trapped himself between the affections of fallow assistant stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor (Nikhita Lesler) and his new catch, the eager but dim Brooke Ashton (Lisa Ambalavanar). Watch out for her exaggerated arm movements, a show in themselves,
What could possibly go wrong? Anticlockwise, from top, Matthew Kelly, Lucy Robinson, Dan Fredenburgh, Liza Goddard, Daniel Rainford and Lisa Ambalavanar in Michael Frayn’s Noises Off. Picture: Pamela Raith
The tour-funding veteran trouper, scatty Dotty Otley (Liza Goddard, such lovely comic timing throughout), has already seduced self-appointed leading man Garry Lejeune (Mark Middleton).
Lucy Robinson’s eternally bubbly and unflappable Belinda Blair supplies the backstage gossip and tea and sympathy. Simon Coates’s forgetful, flaky luvvie Frederick Fellowes, Kelly’s old soak Selsdon Mowbray and Daniel Rainford ‘s quietly scene-stealing, overstretched stage manager Tim Allgood are in need of the director’s reassurance, another drink and sleep respectively.
Act One, on Simon Higlett’s typical touring stage, is all sweetness and light and mutual support, save for the barbed tongue of the exasperated director. By Act Two, one month into the tour, relationships are strained, gloves off, and now witnessed backstage, the side you never normally see.
Picking up the pace, Posner’s cast applies manic energy, humorous physicality and expressive comedy skills to the clashing company’s skirmishes as vendettas and alcohol abuse infect the performance. Silence – necessary backstage – is golden in Frayn’s hands as Nothing On staggers on and Ruth Cooper-Brown’s movement and fight direction comes to the sublime fore.
Then, suddenly, a technical hitch for real, as chance would have it in a play full of them, that required the dinner-jacketed stage manager to make an announcement.
Thankfully, the tabs’ malfunction was not the final curtain, and Act Three could proceed. War is waged on all fronts on the company’s last night in Stockton-on-Tees, the end of the line in every way as Nothing On – seen from the stage again after a round of applause for the rotating stage manoeuvres – becomes a mere side-show to the vituperative settling of scores.
If you have never seen the comic potential in sardines, plates and plates of them, they are yet another reason to savour Noises Off, amid the glorious shenanigans of actors acting up.
Performances: 7.30pm nightly, plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
