An unruly cast of stylish denizens has arrived at the St. James Theatre just in time to relieve the torpor of all of us currently afflicted by, well, almost everything, and offer the New York spring season a comic confection whose ability to delight and distract almost never falters.
Noël Coward wrote his 1939 autobiographical comedy “Present Laughter” with the “sensible object of offering [himself] a bravura part!” He succeeded so well that a long list of consequential leading men has gamboled through the role of the endlessly posturing actor Garry Essendine.
