We Were Dancing is a short comic play in two scenes by Noël Coward. It is one of ten short plays that make up Tonight at 8.30, a cycle written to be performed in groups of three plays across three evenings. The original production, starring Coward and Gertrude Lawrence played in a pre-London tour, and then the West End, and finally New York, in 1935–1937. We Were Dancing has been revived periodically and was adapted for the cinema in 1942.
The play depicts a married woman who falls in love with a divorced man at a dance on a South Pacific island. They plan to go to Australia, but in the cold light of morning, they realise that they have nothing in common and go their separate ways,
Background
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Coward wrote a succession of hits, ranging from the operetta Bitter Sweet (1929) and the epic Cavalcade (1931), requiring a large cast, gargantuan sets and a complex hydraulic stage, to the intimate comedies Private Lives (1930), in which Coward starred alongside Gertrude Lawrence, and Design for Living (1932). Coward said that after Private Lives, he felt that the public enjoyed seeing him and Lawrence together on stage, and so he wrote the play cycle Tonight at 8.30 as "acting, singing, and dancing vehicles for Gertrude Lawrence and myself".
In the programme for the London run Coward wrote:
We Were Dancing was the first of the Tonight at 8.30 cycle to be presented. All the plays in the cycle starred Coward and Gertrude Lawrence. Coward directed the plays and wrote the words and music for songs in four of them. In this play Lawrence's character sings the song "We Were Dancing" in the first scene.
First performances
Tonight at 8.30 opened at the Opera House, Manchester, on 15 October 1935, the first play on the bill, followed by two others from Tonight at 8.30: The Astonished Heart and Red Peppers. It then opened in London on 9 January 1936 at the Phoenix Theatre, but for the first three weeks of the run only six of the plays were presented. We Were Dancing was added on 29 January, and the other three followed later in the run. As in Manchester, We Were Dancing was followed by The Astonished Heart and Red Peppers.
After a try-out in Boston, the Broadway opening took place on 24 November 1936 at the National Theatre, again starring Coward and Lawrence. We Were Dancing was included in the first of the three programmes in the cycle, along with Fumed Oak and Shadow Play.
Roles and original cast
Louise Charteris – Gertrude Lawrence
Hubert Charteris, Louise's husband – Alan Webb
Karl Sandys – Noël Coward
Clara Bethel, Hubert's sister – Alison Leggatt (Joyce Carey in New York) George Davies – Edward Underdown Eva Blake – Moya Nugent Major Blake – Anthony Pelissier Ippaga – Kenneth Carten
Plot
Scene 1: The veranda of the country club on Samolo. Evening
At a dance at the club on a British South Pacific island colony, a young man and woman, George Davies and Eva Blake, leave the dance floor and drive off in his car, heading for a deserted beach where they can be alone. As they leave, Louise Charteris and Karl Sandys waltz in, locked in mutual fascination. They kiss, and are discovered by Louise's husband, Hubert, and his sister Clare. Hubert listens civilly to Karl's protestations of love for Louise, and admits to Karl that he himself is no longer madly in love with Louise after 13 years of marriage, although he still cares for her greatly. The exchange is interrupted by the entrance of Major Blake, looking for his wife, Eva. Clara fobs him off by saying that Eva is with mutual friends, the Baileys and he goes out. Hubert remains concerned that Louise is so sure that she wants to be with a man she has only just met. She replies in song – "We were dancing … When the world caught on fire"; emotion overcomes her and she faints in Karl's arms.
Scene 2: The veranda. Early morning
The four have been talking all night and are exhausted. Karl proposes to take Louise with him on a business trip to Australia, and Hubert, resignedly bidding him make her happy, leaves with Clara. Left alone together Louise and Karl realise that their earlier emotions were transitory and that they are not in love with each other. They dance together, but the spark has died. They part on good terms and she leaves. Eva Blake and George Davies return furtively from their illicit excursion hoping not to have been missed. Karl remembers the Major's enquiries and asks, "Is your name Eva?" When she says yes, he replies sardonically, "I congratulate you."