The Vortex — Noel Coward

The Vortex is a play in three acts by the English writer and actor Noël Coward. The play depicts the sexual vanity of a rich, ageing beauty, her troubled relationship with her adult son, and drug abuse in British society circles after the First World War. The son's cocaine habit is seen by many critics as a metaphor for homosexuality, then taboo in Britain. Despite, or because of, its scandalous content for the time, the play was Coward's first great commercial success.The play premiered in November 1924 in London and played in three theatres until June 1925, followed by a British tour and a New York production in 1925–26. It has enjoyed several revivals and a film adaptation.In the years after the First World War, pairings in England of older, upper class women and younger men were common. The idea for the play was put in Coward's mind by an incident at a nightclub.[2] Grace Forster, the elegant mother of his friend Stewart Forster, was talking to a young admirer, when a young woman said, in earshot of Coward and Forster, Will you look at that old hag over there with the young man in tow; she's old enough to be his mother. Forster paid no attention, and Coward immediately went across and embraced Grace, as a silent rebuke to the young woman who had made the remark. The episode led him to consider how a mother–young son–young lover triangle might be the basis of a play