Contact: Facebook.

Has Anybody Seen Our Ship?

Sound file

In 1935/1936, Noël Coward wrote a series of 10 short plays which were performed, three to an evening, in Manchester, London, and later on Broadway. Noël and Gertrude Lawrence had been a smashing hit in his play Private Lives in 1930, and he expressly sat out to write the plays and music contained in Tonight at 8:30 in the main as vehicles for his and Gertrude's appearance on stage together.

Has Anybody Seen Our Ship? is the musical centerpiece of "Red Peppers", one of the ten short plays composing Tonight at 8:30. In this poignant play, George Pepper (Noël Coward) and wife, Lily Pepper (Gertrude Lawrence) play the members of an English vaudeville team who, after a long career, are having to accept less and less attractive engagements. We hear them engaging in the kind of cutting banter characteristic of long-term, somewhat stressed relationships. Answering a call to the stage, George and Lily put on a good performance of Has Anybody Seen Our Ship?‚—a clever ditty about two somewhat befuddled sailors on a drunken binge—with the exception that Lily drops her telescope on exit. George is quite upset with Lily about this mishap. But when the manager begins to complain, they quickly jump to each other's defense. And in just a few minutes, there they are, back on stage, holding forth with Men About Town.