Shadow Play (play)

Shadow Play, described by the author as "a musical fantasy", is a one-act play by Noël Coward, one of ten^{[n 1]} that make up Tonight at 8.30, a cycle written to be performed across three evenings. Short plays were unfashionable in the 1920s and 30s, but Coward was fond of the genre and conceived the idea of a set of brief pieces to be played across several evenings. The actress most closely associated with him was Gertrude Lawrence, and he wrote the ten plays as vehicles for them both.

Shadow Play depicts a husband and wife in a marriage on the brink of collapse. Under the influence of an unwisely large dose of sleeping pills, the wife has a dream that retells their story in hallucinatory form. Musical intervals weave in and out of the dream. The husband is so concerned for his wife's condition that his love is rekindled, and when she comes round they are reconciled.

The play was first produced in 1935 in Manchester and then toured for nine weeks before opening in London (1936) and New York (1936–37), where the cycle played to full houses. Shadow Play has enjoyed several major revivals and has been adapted for television and radio.

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