Playhouse planning ‘A Marvelous Party’

It’s still over a month until Christmas, but the Laguna Playhouse is making plans to celebrate a joyous “Noel” next week. Noel Coward, that is. The prolific Englishman’s compositions for the stage and music halls have been compiled into yet another tribute, following “Oh Coward” and “Cowardly Custard,” which both first hit the theaters a quarter of a century ago.

This one, a West Coast premiere, is titled “A Marvelous Party: the Noel Coward Celebration” and it’s structured somewhat akin to the revue gleaned from Stephen Sondheim’s earlier works, “Side by Side by Sondheim.” There’ll be two guys, a girl and a live band to bring Coward’s work back into the spotlight.

All three performers in the Laguna show — Mark Anders, Carl Danielsen and Anna Lauris — are well versed in the works of Noel Coward, having all recently performed in “Oh Coward” for the Arizona Theater Company. The artistic director of that enterprise, David Ira Goldstein, is staging the Laguna production.

Anders and Goldstein share another Coward connection — they worked together in a staging of “Cowardly Custard” some 18 years ago.

Anders and Danielsen, who’s also the musical director for the local show, shared the stage in a production of “2 Pianos, 4 Hands,” which the playhouse also produced a season ago.

The subject of this musical tribute would have been 100 years old in 1999 had he not passed away in 1973. Coward made his professional debut in 1911, at the age of 12, in a children’s musical called “The Goldfish,” and by the time he reached 16 he was playing the title role in the comedy “Charley’s Aunt.”

Habitual theatergoers have enjoyed Coward’s stage comedies such as “Private Lives,” “Hay Fever” and the “Tonight at 8:30” playlets.

In 1932, his movie “Cavalcade” won the best picture Oscar.

“A Marvelous Party” will be staged through Dec. 17 at the playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, playing nightly except Mondays with weekend matinees.

Call the theater at (949) 494-2787 for reservations and further information.

Speaking of marvelous parties, the Laguna Playhouse certainly could throw one with the $400,000 it just received from the James Irvine Foundation.

The grant was bestowed “to support the theater’s mission to enrich lives through theater by funding a new communications program designed to develop meaningful and sustained relationships with younger and diverse communities of theatergoers,” according to executive director Richard Stein.

The Laguna Playhouse is among Southern California’s largest nonprofit resident professional theater companies — and is the oldest continuously operating theater company on the West Coast, founded in 1920.

It functioned as a community theater until the 1990s when Stein and artistic director Andrew Barnicle transformed it into a professional operation.