I'll Leave It To You A Light Comedy In Three Acts

by Noël Coward

A rich uncle announces he has a terminal illness and plans to leave his estate to one of his sister’s children but under one condition. The family scrambles to accommodate his needs and meet the requirements of the inheritance. Mrs. Dermott is a widow and mother of five adult children—Oliver, Evangeline, Sylvia, Bobbie and Joyce. They live together in a large country house that they can no longer afford. The children are stagnant with no careers or future aspirations. Desperate, Mrs. Dermott turns to her brother Daniel for help. Once he arrives, Uncle Daniel declares he’s gravely ill and plans to leave his fortune to one of his sister’s children. He will bequeath a lucrative inheritance to the niece or nephew who is able to make the most of their life. In an effort to gain his favor, each child embarks on a different career path becoming successful in their own right. This leads to a startling revelation about Uncle Daniel, his wealth and mysterious illness.
I’ll Leave It to You is a three-act play that’s both clever and entertaining. It’s one of Noël Coward’s earliest and most memorable works. It was written at age 19 and produced the following year in Manchester and London’s West End.

Genres: Plays, Humor, Drama, British Literature, Classics

76 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 28, 2007

About the author

Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English actor, playwright, and composer of popular music. Among his achievements, he received an Academy Certificate of Merit at the 1943 Academy Awards for "outstanding production achievement for In Which We Serve."

Known for his wit, flamboyance, and personal style, his plays and songs achieved new popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, and his work and style continue to influence popular culture. The former Albery Theatre (originally the New Theatre) in London was renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in his honour in 2006.

Reviews

[Tegan Eva · Rating 2 out of 5]

A difficult read, sorry Noel. Some fun, light moments, but mostly felt like pulling teeth. I was racing to finish it. Felt the biggest relief when I got to the end. I will admit I smiled at the last two lines. Although that might have been because I was glad it was finally over. No sympathy for any of these characters, but I understand what the 'moral' of the story was clawing at. I'm sure audiences in 1920 would have been pleased by it. Sylvia has a glimmer of a bracing monologue towards the end; her and Bobbie probably have the most potential for expansion. Ultimately felt too cluttered, with too many characters - not leaving much room for development or exploration - and the siblings blur into one another. An early prelude by Coward that serves as a basis for characterisation, structure, and themes in his later works. A fun premise, bright characters with potential, and what is particularly impressive is that he wrote it at 19, but I found it tricky to navigate and stick with. It is however clear to see how it showed a lot of promise for Coward as a young writer at the time. Cheeky (but unsurprising) that he cast himself as Bobbie.

[Scull17 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Highlyeccentric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Huh. I don't think I've actually read or seen any Noel Coward before. This was fun to read aloud, and I suspect it would be ENORMOUS fun to stage, but I suspect would have to be a brilliant production for me to love it as an *audience* member.

Also I couldn't help assimilating the uncle to GUM from Ballet Shoes, which was... wild.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Light" is the operative word here. My only previous real-theatre experience of Coward's work was Blithe Spirit. This, Coward's first produced play, was very obviously box-office fodder for the theatregoing public at a time when the movies were as yet in their infancy (which he sends up in the course of the play.) It's all about how a bourgeois family falls on hard times when the estranged father dies, and they each manage to discover hidden talents that not only allow them to earn the daily crust, but of course quite a lot of butter and jam as well. Unfortunately it has not aged well. Later, of course, when he could get away with it, Coward would have delved into the parents' estrangement and the socially scabrous reasons therefor and consequences thereof. Here, there is no sign of "The Master"'s much-vaunted rapier wit, and I can only hope that there was a lot of humour for a 1920s audience that was simply too contemporary to survive, rather like the pancakes/mustard joke in Shakespeare's forest of Arden, which doesn't so much fall flat today as simply go unnoticed, and is the first bit of dialogue to be cut in modern productions, as no one knows what it refers to. Coward himself described it as an ‘amiable, innocuous and deeply unpretentious little comedy’. No surprise that it has never been revived to my knowledge.

I read the play in less than an hour on the first sleepless night of 2017. The ending really didn't work for me, but I suppose it got guffaws from the dress circle.