Daily Telegraph, June 7, 1991, by Charles Spencer.
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"Coward shocks America" screamed one of the headlines when 
"Point Valaine" opened in New York in 1935, but he didn't 
shock it enough to ensure a "succes de scandale." Despite 
lubriciously reported scenes of "ugly lust and violence" 
with "Mr. Alfred Lunt manhandling Miss Lynn Fontanne in a 
completely outrageous manner," the show lasted fewer than 
eight weeks and was the biggest flop of the Lunts' career.

After the war, Coward firmly ruled out plans to transfer a 
British production to the West End. "I have never really 
considered that his play was quite good enough," he said. He 
wasn't kidding. The play is absolutely terrible.

But as Tim Luscombe's rare revival at Chichester's Minerva 
Studio proves, bad art can be good fun. Take a spare 
handkerchief and be prepared to stuff it into your mouth to 
stiffle the giggles.

In "Point Valaine" Coward was trying something different 
from the light comedy at which he excelled. Set in a hotel 
on a small island in the British West Indies, there are 
delightfully cumbersome attempts to create a Somerset 
Maughamish atmosphere of tropical claustrophobia. If the 
characters complain once about how hot and sticky it is, 
they complain a dozen times, and the rain it raineth every 
day.

Linda Valaine, the owner of the hotel, is having a secret, 
torrid affair with her head waiter, an intense Russian with 
"very strange eyes," who is much given to moody bouts of 
accordion playing. Then a young Englishman arrives, a pilot 
who had had a "pretty average bloody" time of it after 
pranging his plane in the jungle and who felt "rather 
beastly" after his only experience of sex. He and the older 
woman fall instantly in love, but Stefan catches them "in 
flagrante," goes berserk on his squeeze-box and gives Linda 
the notorious manhandling before screaming "go back to your 
little English gentleman with my kisses on your lips and 
spittle on your face."

The combination of the clipped, brittle chit-chat of the oh 
so terribly English characters staying at the hotel ("Don't 
forget to take your iron jelloids!") and Coward's doomed 
attempt to inject real passion into his writing is as 
ludicrous as you could wish for. I have an uneasy feeling, 
however, that Luscombe thinks the piece is really rather 
good. Certainly it is played dead straight by the cast.

Sara Kestelman goes through the emotional mangle with such 
conviction as Linda Valaine that you are sometimes in danger 
of forgetting just how rubbishy her lines are. And though 
Jack Klaff looks thoroughly uncomfortable as the mad Russian 
(and who could blame him?) there are some stylish supporting 
performances, most notably from Edward Petherbridge who 
brings his familiar wry melancholy to the role of Mortimer 
Quinn, a Coward-like writer watching the melodramatic 
maelstrom from the sidelines.

I can't imagine what persuaded Chichester to revive this 
long-forgotten tosh, but for all the wrong reasons, I'm 
delighted they did. 



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