The Vortex

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 controversial 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.

Background

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. Grace Forster, the elegant mother of his friend Stewart Forster, was talking to a young admirer, when a young women 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.

The Vortex (film)

The Vortex is a 1928 British drama film directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ivor Novello, Willette Kershaw and Simeon Stuart. It was an adaptation of the Noël Coward play The Vortex and was made by Gainsborough Studios. The film's sets were designed by Clifford Pember.

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The Vortex (novel)

The Vortex (Spanish: La Vorágine) is a novel written in 1924 by the Colombian author José Eustasio Rivera. It is set in the jungles of Colombia during the Rubber boom.

This novel relates the adventures of Arturo Cova, a hot-headed proud chauvinist and his lover Alicia, as they elope from Bogotá, through the flatlands and later, escaping from criminal misgivings, through the tropical jungles of Colombia.

In this way Rivera is able to describe the magic of these regions, with their rich biodiversity, and the lifestyle of the inhabitants. However, one of the main objectives of the novel is to reveal the appalling conditions under which workers in the rubber factories toil. La Vorágine also introduces the reader to the tremendous hardship of enduring the overwhelming and adverse environment of the rainforest, as the protagonists (Arturo Cova and Alicia) get lost and are unable to be found. As the book says: ¡Los devoró la selva! (literally, "The jungle devoured them!").

The novel is written in an elegant and refined prose, full of metaphors and prosaic poetry, that shows the beauty and exotism of the virgin rainforest.