Search - Noel Coward :: Centenary Celebration

Not enough of Noel

M. Frank | Centennial, Colorado United States | 10/31/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"As a great Coward fan, I was slightly disappointed with this CD for two reasons. Firstly, there are a lot of songs on it which are not sung by Noel Coward himself but by various of his female musical associates. The quality of these tracks is rather patchy and the words, so vital to an appreciation of Coward's talent, are frequently inaudible, in particular in the wonderful song, 'I Went to a Marvellous Party'. Secondly, 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen', undoubtedly the most famous of Coward's songs, has been edited in order to make it more politically correct by omitting the 'wogga wogga' sounds that natives in Africa are said by Coward to make. Coward belongs to a period of jingoistic colonialism and imperialism; attempting to dilute that by editorial intervention is unwarranted revisionism.
Apart from these two criticisms, the CD offers a good sample of Coward's work."

Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the Midday Sun.

johnthirdearl | Lynnwood, WA United States | 11/24/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I've been a great fan of Noel Coward, one of the 20th century's greatest playwrites, wits, and lyricists, since I was 14. This import was the only one available from Amazon.com that included my favorite Noel Coward song, "Don't Let's be Beastly to the Germans," a song Noel informs us at its beginning, was a satire directed against "a small minority of excessive humanitarians" during WW2, who "were a taking a rather too tolerant view of our enemies." (Sample lyric: "Though they gave us science, culture, art, and music to access, they also gave us two World Wars and Dr. Rudolf Hess.") One only has to hear the literacy and wit of Coward's lyrics, and any comparisons between pretenders-to-the-throne Cole Porter and Albert Jay Lerner will disappear like a snowflake over boiling water."