"noËl coward's sweet potato"

In 1968, Roderick Cook, an actor who had played a supporting role in The Girl Who Came to Supper, conceived the idea of a revue featuring songs by Noël Coward and brief scenes from his plays. The show was called Noël Coward’s Sweet Potato. Despite a top-notch cast, including Dorothy Loudon, George Grizzard, Carole Shelley, and Arthur Mitchell, who would go on to found the Dance Theatre of Harlem the following year, Sweet Potato was not a success. Critics did not appreciate that the balcony scene from Private Lives featured Amanda and Elyot on roller skates. The show was directed by choreographer Lee Theodore.

The Boston Globe critic, visiting New York, found the revue to be “smart, scintillating, ultra-sophisticated, a small-scale revue of infinite charm and nearly endless wit.” But he was in the minority. A few years later, Cook re-shaped and expanded Sweet Potato into the much more successful Oh, Coward!. Without the roller skates.