Noel Coward's plays: I'll Leave It to You (1920)

I'll Leave It to You (1920), light comedy in three acts

In 1920, at the age of 20, Coward starred in his own play, the light comedy I'll Leave It to You. After a tryout in Manchester, it opened in London at the New Theatre (renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in 2006), his first full-length play in the West End.

Neville Cardus's praise in The Manchester Guardian was grudging. Notices for the London production were mixed, but encouraging. The Observer commented, "Mr Coward... has a sense of comedy, and if he can overcome a tendency to smartness, he will probably produce a good play one of these days." The Times, on the other hand, was enthusiastic: "It is a remarkable piece of work from so young a head – spontaneous, light, and always 'brainy'."

From Logos Theatre, which produced the play in 2006:
http://www.logostheatre.co.uk/productions/coward.html

When the 20-year-old Noël Coward was waiting for the start of rehearsals for I’ll Leave It to You, he told a friend that he’d hate to have a settled income. “It would,” the wunderkind grandly explained, “take away my determination to succeed.” And that suggests that he had taken personally the moral of the play, in which a supposedly rich man prods, manipulates, bribes and wins his idle nephews and dependent nieces over to work, work, profitable work.

The enterprising little Pentameters claims that the play hasn’t had a professional production since 1920, when it gave Coward his first West End showing, though one that lasted only 37 performances. It’s easy to see reasons for its neglect. It’s predictable, has a sentimental ending and skims across surfaces like a paper boat in a breeze. Yet it’s also lively, diverting and of real interest to Coward fans, foreshadowing as it does much that was to come later and better in Coward’s career.