This Happy Breed
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Coward play a 'Breed' of its own

reviewed by Chris Jones
Chicago Tribune
11/7/2004

Despite his perennial association with hoity-toity toffs in penguin suits, Noel Coward was, in fact, firmly lower middle class. Like other aspects of his life, Coward's image as the consummate witty English gentleman was, at once, a brilliant self-invention and a studied self-obfuscation. As his nephew once noted in a BBC documentary, Coward actually was a man who liked his slippers and a steak-and-kidney pie.

The rest was all a very clever act.

You could, then, make the case that "This Happy Breed" (maybe along with "The Vortex," for other reasons) was Coward's most revelatory play, not least because it is set in the social milieu from which Coward actually emerged, rather than that from which he made his living. And since this playwright was more skilled in stylish deception than personal revelation, it's no coincidence that it's also one of his most rarely seen plays.

But TimeLine Theatre Company is trotting out a rare Chicago production thereof and a darn good one at that.

Not only does director Nick Bowling manage to give this well-made play the necessary sense of the epic, but thanks mainly to two unflashy but intensely credible and heartfelt performances from Terry Hamilton and, especially, Isabel Liss, as good old Frank and Ethel Gibbons, he also has the entire theater fighting back tears in the second act.

"This Happy Breed" is neither a comedic soupcon nor a great drama. And one can discern a note of condescension therein. Told in nine scenes spread between 1919 and 1939, it's the tale of one ordinary family, the Gibbons, who buckle down and get on with their lower middle-class lives despite the social and war-driven upheavals around them, here manifested mainly through a variety of tear-jerking personal tragedies involving their adult kids.

Coward, a social conservative in many ways, intended this long play as a tribute to the British stiff upper lip and the fortitude required by those who just keep on carrying on. A cynic might add that Coward also thought such a pro-British piece of sentimental, patriotic drama — the pandering closing monologue has to be heard to be believed — would bring in plenty of cash. But even though it might be too imperialist for some, the piece is not without considerable wisdom, deft construction and careful personal observation. When done as well as this, the play also will especially move those confronted with the multifarious perils of parenting.

Bowling's thoughtful, in-the-round show — a savvy choice for the family period around Thanksgiving — adds some newsreel montages between the scenes, thus providing a useful look at the social context as the years in the play peel away. There are moments when the pace and the performances get too ponderous, but this nonetheless is a very classy, carefully nuanced show. It's full of decent, authentic acting, including Bill Bannon as the sweet guy next door, and the husky-voiced Dana Black's unusual turn as Queenie Gibbons, the show's fallen woman whose terrible plight and subsequent redemption turn out to be so unexpectedly affecting.