I will be directing the next play in our active senior adult community. I've been looking at Waiting in the Wings by Noel Coward as it has a cast that fits our members' ages and also calls for 14 women and only 4 men. In my opinion, it is slow moving, but there is an opportunity for the cast to really get their teeth into "character development."

In the past, we've only produced light-weight musicals, which our senior audience is getting tired of seeing, tho our members love to do.

If you've had any experience with this play or any of Coward's, please let me know how your audience reacted, plus did your cast like doing it?

Our audience consists of relatives and residents of our community. We do not sell tickets outside, because of restrictions.

Thanks.

I agree that Americans seem to think all Brits act like the cast of a
Masterpiece Theatre piece. They forget that Britain also gave us Monty
Python, Benny Hill, and Graham Norton!

 Blimey cobber, be natural with a Yankee accent. Coward is complete subtle humour, coming more from the dialogue, pauses & allowing it to sink in to the  punters, rather than being in your face slap stick comedy.
Don?t try & mimic the toffee nose pohms of the era, which in most regards, was Noels way of bunging on a bit of side & getting up the noses of the rather polite society. As he did for most of his life, which belied his humbler birth. He used it successfully as a tool to camp it up & get his point across! [In more ways than one]
Go for it the BeJa the blue rinse set & others will love it!
Although he was as camp as row of tent pegs, he was  more acceptable to the fairer gender!

Maybe the director should have of got a copy of the generic  ?Ha ha ha? recording, that is used for the supposed  TV comedy bits produced over there, to play to the cast during rehearsals. But as you posted the director would have needed to be cued at the humorous bits anyway.
I?m not knocking yankee TV comedy or humour in general. But it always amasses me why they use the same generic audience laughter recording. Or believe they need to prompt the viewers into laughing, at what they think is the right places & the obvious punch lines?
Although I have been advised over time, that the average TV executive believes in treating the audience as 5 years olds. Even though I believe the average 5 year old is normally miles ahead of the situation & the funny bits as they unfold on TV.
Unfortunately it has crept into the odd pohmy productions, except they either use a live audience or different recordings each time. Because it is difficult & I can?t seem to pick up the same bods laughing, in the different shows of the same series.
Maybe as with over there, it is just the pohmy sense of humour has been cultivated completely differently?

It is the original acronym for ?Property Of His Majesty" which was used on the ships manifest of convicts sent to Australia. So anyone from Britain became know as a Pohmy &/or Pommy, which was also descriptive of the pommy skin, when compared to that of a Pomegranate & their complexion, after being exposed to the sun.
However the original term pohmy bastard was apparently coined as being descriptive of all convicts or ticket of leave prisoners, within the colony.
Much later the term "G?day ya old pohmy bastard " Became G?day ya old bastard". Later the term was deemed by the supreme court as a form of endearment & mateship. Which was extended to include pommy bastard as being a British mate.
In fact I?m a card carrying member of the ?Old Bastards Club?, which is a charitable organisation.
So in real terms I?m still an Old Pohmy Bastard, even though I have been here since 1960.  
As I have not as yet under gone surgery to become an Ocker!