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''South Sea Bubble'' is a play by the English actor and dramatist Noël Coward. It was written in 1949 but not performed until 1951, and not in its final form until 1956. The play was moderately successful in 1956 but failed to match the popularity of Coward's pre-war hits.〔Lesley, pp. 314, 362 and 370; and Lahr, p. 136〕 ==Background== The play is named after the South Sea Bubble, an economic bubble that arose from speculation in the South Sea Company. The play was originally written as a vehicle for Gertrude Lawrence, titled ''Home and Colonial''. Coward intended her to open in it after the conclusion of her run in ''The King and I'', but her unexpected death meant that she never played it. The play was retitled ''Island Fling'', which opened in 1951 with Claudette Colbert in the lead. It ran for eight performances in Westport, Connecticut, U.S. The final version of the play opened as ''South Sea Bubble'', at the Lyric Theatre in the West End, on 25 April 1956.〔"Lyric Theatre", ''The Times'', 26 April 1956, p. 3〕 It was directed by William Chappell and starred Vivien Leigh as Sandy Shotter, the wife of the governor of Samolo, a British island colony in the South Seas.〔 Leigh left the cast in August 1956 and was succeeded by Elizabeth Sellars.〔"Theatres", ''The Times'', 20 August 1956, p. 2〕 The play ran until Christmas 1956, a total of 276 performances.〔"London Theatres", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 22 December 1956, p. 3〕 Samolo, a British possession in the south Pacific, was invented by Coward for his post-war musical ''Pacific 1860'', and reused not only in ''South Sea Bubble'', but in the author's only novel, ''Pomp and Circumstance'' (1960) in which the Shotters reappear, and in the play ''Volcano'', written in 1956 but not staged until 2012.〔Billington, Michael. ("Volcano – review" ), ''The Guardian'', 17 August 2012〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「South Sea Bubble (play)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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