Gervase Hughes’ judgement is harsh. There is no evidence that anybody else wrote Coward’s music for him, although he certainly had assistants such as Elsie April and Robb Stewart who worked on his music with him. Perhaps it is simply that Coward was for all of his life much too busy to concentrate on his operettas, his musicals, his what-you-wills. It is perhaps too much to expect one man to write a catalogue of enduring plays, write and compose or ‘instigate’ popular songs and revues, write novels and short stories, and be a star of stage, screen, cabaret and gramophone records. There is the possibility that for Coward his musicals were of secondary importance, something to be picked up at regular intervals in his long life. Revues gave Coward his first very considerable successes, and some hit songs: in 1923 London Calling! (‘Parisian Pierrot’), in 1925 On with the Dance (‘Poor Little Rich Girl’), in 1928 This Year of Grace (‘A Room with a View’ , ‘Dance Little Lady’).

Bitter-Sweet

The run of revues was followed by Coward’s first ‘operetta’ , Bitter-Sweet (His Majesty’s Theatre, 12 July 1929; 697), written between 1928 and 1929. The title had an unexpected prescience about it, for there was a bitter sweetness about the fact that Coward was to suffer from the problem which affected many other British musical composers – his first musical provided a success he could not follow.