Lucy Stevens plays British theater star Gertrude Lawrence in Gertrude Lawrence: A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening, her own solo musical.
If the British actress Gertrude Lawrence is remembered nowadays, it is primarily for originating the part of Anna Leonowens in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I (1951). She died of liver cancer before the film was made, so her reputation rests on a long theatrical career in Britain and America, as Lucy Stevens’s gossipy Gertrude Lawrence: A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening makes clear.
Stevens herself plays Lawrence in this solo musical, a brisk highlights version of Lawrence’s life. Only a stool and a white fur stole are on stage, but costumers Philip Sefton and Juliette Bacarese-Hamilton have conjured her heyday in one floor-length, late-1930s gown. The dress’s cloth buttons were originally a cheap option but later became classy—the duality reflects both Lawrence’s hardscrabble upbringing and her status as a Bright Young Thing in the 1920s. Her boom-and-bust career is suggested immediately by a single adjective in a loudspeaker announcement: “Please welcome to the stage the imperishable Miss Gertrude Lawrence.” Stevens then sings, from Moss Hart, Ira Gershwin and Kurt Weill’s 1941 Lady in the Dark (one of her Broadway hits):
Starting in the 1920s, Lawrence was a muse to Noël Coward. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
If there’s a party I want to be the host of it.
If there’s a haunted house I want to be the ghost of it.
If I’m in town I want to be the toast of it.
And she was. Internet pictures and clips show her glamorously attired in sparkly gowns, headache bands, strings of jewelry, sometimes wielding a long cigarette holder, but her upbringing was “pure cockney.” From a young age she sang to earn money for the family. Born in 1898 and raised by a single mother, Lawrence left home at 12 after learning unexpectedly that her father was a theatrical idol. She showed up at his theater, and ultimately spent three years with him and his mistress, Rose, before she was urged to strike out on her own by Rose. “I learned to stand alone deep inside myself,” says Gertie.
By 1920 she was making her mark. She recalls meeting the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, and his brother, the Duke of Kent, who came backstage:
I’ll never forget dashing in one night between scenes to find the Duke trying on my wig of long curls.
In the 1920s she teamed professionally with Noël Coward; they’d been school chums at age 11. “‘Parisian Pierrot’ was Noël’s first big hit,” she says, “and he wrote it … for me.” In Sarah-Louise Young’s carefully directed production, only gradually do the pride, the determination, the self-satisfaction begin to mark Lawrence as someone you might not want to know. “I didn’t buy a Bentley car,” she says smugly. “I had one built.” Although she picks up admirers and husbands, seeking security, for Lawrence her career is everything.
I love the theater life, its variety, dangerous and thrilling. People talk about “settling down” as though this were something every nice girl should wish to do. Well, perhaps I’m not a nice girl.
She puts her daughter, Pamela, in a boarding school, and, during her hectic schedule of theater, film and writing newspaper articles in the 1930s, Pamela gives an interview that damages mom’s reputation. Mulling the fallout, the actress delivers a hollow, self-justifying speech:
What happens, if the failure of a too hasty marriage leaves a woman alone with a young child to support? If she decides to give her child all the advantages in life, she must sacrifice the natural longings of her heart and substitute for motherhood a career. As the years pass this career mother sees less and less of her child, who receives a high education at the expense of close affection. … One can only hope that they will grow into close companions later on.
Lawrence’s boom-and-bust career includes Coward’s Private Lives and George and Ira Gershwin’s Oh, Kay! among her successes.
But, given the Bentley, the husbands, the affairs, the name-dropping—“As I told my dear friend Daphne … du Maurier”—it becomes harder to feel for the cold personality. By the time she has destroyed her health—18 months in The King and I, with no vacation—she is a sad figure.
Stevens does a nice job gradually breaking down the cheery façade of the great star, but her voice is opera-trained, and the songs—Lawrence introduced “Bye, Bye, Blackbird” in the Gershwins’ 1926 hit Oh, Kay!—don’t have a musical theater timbre. They’re intelligently sung, but the style is off.
Still, the show provides a lot of gossipy backstage chat, and it portrays a woman who paid a high price to reach the heights of fame and stardom. That triumphalist word imperishable seems deeply ironic by the end.
Gertrude Lawrence: A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening runs through May 25 at 59E59 Theaters (59 E. 59th St.). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit 59e59.org.
Playwright: Lucy Stevens
Director: Sarah-Louise Young
Music Director: Elizabeth Marcus
Costume Design: Philip Sefton & Juliet Bacarese-Hamilton
Sound: Ben Smithers
