The Guardian didn’t much like Noel Coward’s Relative Values – but you will

Cripes. How did I get that one wrong? A few issues back I blithely predicted that Harry Hill’s musical I Can’t Sing would run for three years. It closes this month, so I’m a little reluctant to praise another glittering comedy, Relative Values by Noël Coward, which, like Hill’s stricken satire, has received a few snubs from the critics.

In his early dramas, Coward portrayed servants as amiable bunglers or bossy cynics and he rarely gave them more than one wisecrack per act. In Hay Fever, for example, the leading lady can’t even recall the housekeeper’s name, and her forgetfulness is supposed to be funny and attractive. Relative Values dates from 1951, when domestic service was in decline and social divisions were being steam-rollered flat. Coward’s response was to write a play in which the servants are fully realised characters who offer their employers shrewd advice and emotional support. It’s a fascinating slice of social history that shows the poshest of the posh grappling with the death of pedigree.

Most popular

Druin Burch

Lucy Letby and the killer nurse I worked with

We meet an aristocratic clan whose heir is about to marry an upstart film star, Miranda, who has an elder sister, Moxie, whom she hasn’t seen for years.