I was not aware that this was a live stage play. It was hard to follow on the audio tape. This was not really a 'story' being told. You really had to visualize who the characters were and what they were doing. This is not good for an audio book content.
I am an avid audio book listener.

Noel Coward delights again with this hilarious partner-swapping comedy. The performers joyfully embrace the material as Coward explores the wonderness and the pitfalls of love and desire.

I am all in favor of more Americans who don't happen to have lives in the Theatre, familiarizing themselves with the works of Noel Coward. And if this charming, funny, little sampler (chock full of rhymes and quotes and line drawings) will help, then I'm all for it.

But, most of Coward's quotes in Day's book are taken out of context from plays and films. And what usually makes most of them laugh-out-loud funny or just smilingly clever is that very context: what and how and why Coward's characters say what they say.

Also alot of his references are very, very British and relatively antique like this short speech from "Private Lives," one of his best and most frequently revived plays: (Amanda): "And India, the burning Ghars, or Ghats, or whatever they are, and the Taj Mahal. How was the Taj Mahal?...And it didn't look like a biscuit box, did it? I've always felt that it might." That passage (quoted in its entirety from this volume) is simply not really funny, unless the reader knows the play and the character of 'Amanda' or is watching the play and hears the actress playing 'Amanda' speak the lines.

But then there are always his wonderful, romantic lyrics, usually tinged with sadness when they are not downright playful: "I'll see you again,/Whenever spring breaks through again;/Time may lie heavy between,/But what has been/Is past forgetting."

And wonderful, pithy lines that have to do as much with today (think: American politics) as they do with the period in which they were written: "It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit."

If this book is a jumping-off place for people to really dig in and investigate Coward more thoroughly, then I recommend it. Better yet, read his plays like the above mentioned "Private Lives" and "Hay Fever" and "Blithe Spirit" to begin with, and then some of his short stories and his vastly under-rated Diaries.

This is often regarded as Coward's best play. Supposedly written as a vehicle for Coward and his friend, the great Gertrude Lawrence, it displays the wit and stagecraft which made Coward famous. As a serious work, however, it is limited. It is clear that Coward was aiming to investigate the irrational nature of love, sort of a modern day Twelfth Night. Coward's plot and characters are not able to sustain this burden. Even when performed by excellent actors in first rate productions, it still comes across as a skillful farce and not much more.