Hands Across the Sea, described by the author as "a comedy of bad manners", is a one-act play by Noël Coward, one of ten that make up Tonight at 8.30, a cycle written to be performed across three evenings. One-act plays were unfashionable in the 1920s and 30s, but Coward was fond of the genre and conceived the idea of a set of short pieces to be played across several evenings. The actress most closely associated with him was Gertrude Lawrence, and he wrote the plays as vehicles for them both.
The play, widely seen as caricaturing Coward's friends Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, depicts an upper class couple and their haphazard and chaotic reception of guests in their drawing room.
The play was first produced in 1935 in Manchester and then toured for nine weeks before opening in London (1936) and New York (1936–37). It has been revived occasionally and has been adapted for television and radio.
Background and first productions
Short plays had been popular in the previous century, often as curtain-raisers and afterpieces to longer plays. By the 1920s they had gone out of fashion, but Coward was fond of the genre and wrote several early in his career. He wrote, "A short play, having a great advantage over a long one in that it can sustain a mood without technical creaking or over padding, deserves a better fate, and if, by careful writing, acting and producing I can do a little towards reinstating it in its rightful pride, I shall have achieved one of my more sentimental ambitions." In 1935 he conceived the idea of a set of short plays, to run in varying permutations on three consecutive nights at the theatre. His biographer Philip Hoare describes it as "a bold idea, risky and innovative". Coward finished writing all ten of the plays by the end of August 1935.
The actress most closely associated with Coward was Gertrude Lawrence, his oldest friend, with whom he had first acted as a child in Hannele in 1913. They starred together in his revue London Calling! (1923) and his comedy Private Lives (1930–31), and he wrote the Tonight at 8.30 plays "as acting, singing and dancing vehicles for Gertrude Lawrence and myself". Coward directed the plays as well as acting in them. They were performed in various combinations of three.
Hands Across the Sea was first presented on 18 October 1935 at the Opera House, Manchester, the first play in a programme that also contained Fumed Oak and Shadow Play. The first London performance was on 13 January 1936, when the three plays opened at the Phoenix Theatre. The cycle played to full houses, and the limited season closed on 20 June, after 157 performances. The Broadway premiere was at the National Theatre on 27 November 1936, with mostly the same cast as in London. As in the Manchester and London premieres, the programme also included We Were Dancing and Red Peppers. The New York run of the cycle, a limited season, as in London, ended prematurely because Coward was taken ill.
The main characters, a British couple, Commander Peter Gilpin and his wife Lady Maureen ("Piggie") Gilpin, were widely recognised as caricatures of Coward's friends Lord Louis ("Dickie") Mountbatten and his wife Edwina, who, Coward later said, "used to give cocktail parties and people used to arrive that nobody had ever heard of and sit about and go away again; somebody Dickie had met somewhere, or somebody Edwina had met – and nobody knew who they were. We all talked among ourselves, and it was really a very very good basis for a light comedy." Mountbatten, in mock indignation, called it "a bare-faced parody of our lives, with Gertie Lawrence playing Lady Maureen Gilpin and Noël Coward playing me. Absolutely outrageous...!"
Roles and original cast
Walters – Moya Nugent
Lady Maureen Gilpin (Piggie) – Gertrude Lawrence
Commander Peter Gilpin, R.N. – Noël Coward
Lieut.-Commander Alastair Corbett, R.N. – Edward Underdown
Mrs Wadhurst – Alison Leggatt (Joyce Carey in New York) Mr Wadhurst – Alan Webb Mr Burnham – Kenneth Carten The Hon. Clare Wedderburn – Everley Gregg (Joan Swinstead in New York) Major Gosling – Anthony Pelissier