Season 23 Play 5 – Look After Lulu by Noel Coward
Directed by
Cast
Yvonne – Jean Stuckey
Paulette – Mary Woolridge
Marcel – Donald Clough
Philippe De Groze – Frank Breen
Bomba – Gordon Sugden
Valery – Tim Wyatt
Claire, Duchess of Clausonnes – Patricia Clough
Adonis – Andrew Brunt
Van Putzeboum – Keith Short
Gigot – Frank Rushworth
Prince of Salestria – Geoffrey Burnley
General Koschnadieff – Robert Green
Rose – Sheryl Clough
Aunt Gabrielle – Mavis Dean
Gaby – Pat Bridgewater
Mayor – Jack Hiley
Oudatte – Robert Shaw
Cornette – Jesse Scarfe
Photographer – Kenneth Paine
Inspector of Police – Jack Hargreaves
Little Girl – Ann Brumfitt
Boys – Howard Hopkins, Bryce Mitchell
Synopsis
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Directors Notes
Several years ago, after our smashing success with Feydeau’s ” HOTEL PARADISO,” we considered producing “Look After Lulu ” by Noel Coward, based on a Feydeau farce and I was invited to direct it.
After many weeks of careful measuring and hours of jig-saw work it was unanimously decided that it was impossible to mount this play on our stage. After all- FOUR SETS and TWO BEDROOMS ! !
At the beginning of the present season the play came up again, and we decided that if we threw the four sets out of the window, so to speak, and relied on the audience’s imagination, we could perhaps get away with it. You can judge for yourselves how much the production relies on Laurie Nutter’s beautifully stylised setting and the deceptive simplicity with which it adapts to the needs of the play. And then_-the casting. All those MEN! Worse than Shakespeare !!
” Look After Lulu ” contains all the inimitable Feydeau magic- the breathless chases the bedrooms (with even more underwear than usual) the hilarious confusion of identities, but it has in addition all the Coward wit and sophistication.
We hope you like it- and if you do, it will help to make bearable the two cases of heart failure and one slipped disc suffered “en route” so to speak.
