Reviews: The Vortex by Noel Coward (Revised edition 2023)

‘We swirl about in a vortex of beastliness.’ The Vortex was first shown at the Everyman theatre, Hampstead, London on 25^th November 1924. Noel Coward directed the play and played the role of Nicky Lancaster, a pianist. Coward was 23 when he wrote the play and set it in the ‘roaring twenties’. A hundred years on, a new performing version of the play has been written and directed by Daniel Raggett at Chichester Festival Theatre where it was first performed on 28 April 2023. This version draws on Coward's original drafts. It makes for excellent parallels between the society of the 1920s and that of the current 2020s.

Florence Lancaster, glamorous and full of vanity, is married to David Lancaster. She is having an affair with Tom Veryan, a sporty man much younger than herself. Her son Nicky, a professional pianist, has just returned from Paris with his new fiancée, Bunty Mainwaring. On the surface, it is all about small talk, cocktails and partying but behind the apparent fun of the jazz age, lurk drug addictions and hidden sexualities. The Lord Chamberlain's office removed some of the allusions to Nicky's coded sexuality but these have been included in the new version. Tom refers to Nicky as ‘effeminate’.

Across three acts the audience meets the cast of ten. Act One is set in Mrs Lancaster's London flat and introduces her son, husband, friends and Helen Saville, a singer. Act Two is set in Mrs Lancaster's house, forty miles from London and centres on a house party with plenty of dancing. Another singer, Clara Hibbert ‘an emaciated soprano’ and Bruce Fairlight, ‘an earnest dramatist’, are introduced. The climax happens when Florence discovers her Tom and Bunty in an embrace. Act Three consists of two duologues, Helen and Florence followed by Florence and Nicky. It builds to an unexpected climax. Nicky pushes his mother to confess her affairs. He reveals his drug addiction and she throws his drugs out of the window and he throughout the play but is still shocking. Nicky: ‘I'm afraid I'm a little beyond aspirin.’

The text is full of one-liners, so the dialogue is quick, witty and punchy. There are several duologues and good opportunities to use song, piano playing and 1920s style dance. It is an amusing play with a dark ending.