This Happy Breed
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Exploration of war's lasting scars is a Coward-ly triumph

reviewed by Hedy Weiss
Chicago Sun-Times
11/9/2004

While American troops were revving up for a major battle in Iraq this weekend, TimeLine Theatre was opening its heartrending, meticulously acted production of "This Happy Breed," a rarely revived British family saga by Noel Coward that is powerfully bookended by the two world wars and filled with all the chaotic events that unspooled between them.

Coward's beautifully observed play looks at the contentious politics and emotional scars that accompany every war -- as well as the changes on the home front that are invariably part of every war's legacy. And it all has a strangely familiar ring.

First produced on the stage in 1942 and filmed by David Lean two years later, the play is the work of a Coward who was well aware of life beyond the golden champagne bubbles that were his stock in trade. True, Coward had spent most of the 1920s and early '30s writing about the glamorous classes and their luxurious, laughable narcissism and sexual exploits. But inspired by the do-or-die situation of his beloved England during the blitz, and by the heroic stance of his countrymen, in "This Happy Breed" he returned to his own middle-class roots. And he wrote what is unquestionably a paean to the homely goodness, occasional small-mindedness and sheer ordinariness of English life.

The play is almost Chekhovian in its tragicomic tone and sense of time, and in its appreciation of the delicacy of human relationships and the potency of idle conversation. And the very talented director Nick Bowling has done a masterful job of filling it out with archival footage that, like the play, spans the years 1919 to 1939 (the socialist movements and General Strike of 1926, the Spanish Civil War, Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy in the face of Hitler's aggression and much more). The world beyond the doors of the modest Gibbons household has been made palpable. And Bowling's 12 impeccably cast actors give us the sense that they have ventured out into it.

"This Happy Breed" opens just a few months after Frank Gibbons (Terry Hamilton, one of those Chicago actors who always does solid work and then suddenly turns up in a huge role and just totally blows you away) has returned from the trenches of World War I. He has settled back into family life with exceptional equanimity in the modest suburban London home he shares with his wife, Ethel (Isabel Liss); their three young children; his cranky mother-in-law Mrs. Flint (Kathleen Ruhl); war-widowed Aunt Sylvia (Angela Bullard), and a maid (Fannie Hungerford). And he thrives on trading the occasional memory and whiskey with his neighbor Bob Mitchell (exquisitely nuanced work by Bill Bannon), a fellow veteran.

It is the fortunes of the Gibbons children that we follow in subsequent scenes. The rebellious Queenie (a lustrous-voice Dana Black) chafes at the "commonness" of her surroundings and rejects the proposals of Bob's son Billy (terrific work by Andrew Carter), the sailor who adores her. The temperate Vi (a spot-on Stacy Magerkurth) follows in her mother's footsteps. And their brother Reg (winning work by Joe Sherman, who shines in the father-son talks Coward has written with such humor) rejects the radical politics of his pal Sam (a deft Tom Bateman) and marries the sweet Phyllis (Kaitlin Byrd).

Andrew Hansen's superb scoring of the show, along with Nicole Rene Burchfield's perfectly dowdy English costumes, Tom Burch's set and Mike Tutaj's projection design enhance Coward's panoramic view. No wonder veteran English actress Rosemary Harris and several members of the Noel Coward Society were applauding loudly on opening night. So was I.