Me and the Girls, review: Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne, until September 21

Every work, song, story or piece of theatre by Noel Coward is, at least in part, about Noel Coward. The autobiography is never far away. Me and the Girls comes from a short story, respectively adapted and directed by Richard Stirling and Stewart Nicholls. It is threaded through, not only with his wry humour and deliciously clever way with words, but with a rather weary view of a world that fails to appreciate his genius.

Ageing impresario George Banks is no Coward but he shares that ironic outlook and also, as it happens, the Master’s sexual orientation. A role first created for Tom Courtenay is here reprised by James Gaddas, convincingly and with genuine pathos. In his Swiss sanatorium, the dying Banks looks back on life, career and adventures with his Vaudeville troupe – a kind of superior End of the Pier Show on Tour – and on his lost loves. He has taken the Bombshells to Paris, Africa, Singapore and back but now he only lives on memories. There is a tragic persona behind the comic mask.