Given the success of Noel Coward at Las Vegas, it wasn’t a great leap to use his New York shows to act as a companion piece. Noel Coward in New York is, if anything, a better album. Partially because the audio is cleaner, you would be excused from thinking that this was a live album, at all. Plus, free from the cold which plagued the Las Vegas recordings, Coward is here, quite simply at his best. Once again he demonstrates a vocal dexterity which few could match and a wicked sense of humour.

Thankfully, for posterity, Coward didn’t just simply repeat his successful Vegas show; instead he performed a new set of songs, with only his signature closing song ‘The Party’s Over Now’ turning up on both recordings. Unlike the Vegas shows, all the songs here were written by Coward.

The full track listing is:

'I Like America', 'Louisa', 'Half-Caste Woman', 'I Went to a Marvellous Party', 'Time and Again', 'Why Must the Show Go On', 'New York Medley: Let's Say Goodbye/Teach Me To Dance Like Grandma/We Were Dancing/Sign No More/Z ', 'What's Going to Happen to the Tots', 'Sail Away', 'Wait a Bit', 'Joe', '20th Century Blues', 'I Wonder What Happened to Him (Indian Army Officer)' and 'The Party's Over Now'.

If the Las Vegas album was great, this recording is just sublimely brilliant.

9

Charles Packer