As the closing and demolition of the ANU Arts Centre draws near, the final few shows at Teatro Vivaldi take on a special significance. The next one harks back to the early days of its owners, Mark Santos and Anthony Hill, when they had The Noel Coward Hotel in London for 15 years.

It was more than just a name: the bed and breakfast, at 111 Ebury Street, was where Coward and his mother had lived from 1917.

Hill says Coward's father was an unemployed piano salesman and, out of options, Mrs Coward moved the family there and ran it as a boarding house.

"Next door at 109 was Mrs Evans, mother of Dame Edith Evans."

The young Noel Coward lived there between the ages of 17 and 30, when his fame as a writer, director and actor was growing.

"He stayed there until about 1930. He moved around the corner to Gerald Street."

Apparently the neighbours had been complaining too much about the noise of his raucous parties.

Santos and Hill turned the place into quite a tourist attraction and gained the approval of the Coward estate to promote the connection. They have a few Coward mementos from their time in the hotel.

"It's like teddy bears; once people see you have them, people give you more."

While some are of dubious provenance, others are authentic; they were given a few handwritten Coward letters from the 1920s.

At Teatro Vivaldi, some of their earliest shows had a Coward theme, with Dennis Olsen and Amanda Muggleton doing Coward musical revues. Now, near the end of the venue's life, Tony Turner is directing two early and seldom seen Coward short comedy plays, Mild Oats and Weatherwise, as a double bill with dinner.

Alessa Kron, who is appearing in both, says Mild Oats was written in 1922 and is a two-person play with characters described simply as He and She. No prizes for guessing which one Kron plays. "He" is played by Henry Strand.

"They're two young people who have gone out on the town trying to be more grown up than they really are," Kron says.

"They meet and go home together and when the scene opens they've arrived back at his apartment."

But neither of them is quite sure they are ready to be as sophisticated and daring as the situation might suggest.

"She" is 21, and Kron will be turning 21 herself in a few months. Kron was last seen on the Canberra stage in the title role of Canberra Repertory Society's production of Trelawny of the "Wells", also directed by Turner and featuring Strand.

In the 1923 play Weatherwise, Kron is playing Cynthia, one of the daughters of Lady Warple , played by Elaine Noon. They and other family members are playing with a ouija board when there's a most peculiar occurrence: Lady Warple is possessed by the spirit of a dog. As she barks and carries on, the distraught family must try to reverse the condition, but the attentions of a psychiatrist (Colin Milner) aren't much use and they must try to figure out what's happened. The other cast members are Emily Ridge, Patricia Manley, George Pulley and Duncan Driver.

Kron has been keeping herself busy. In the fourth year of an arts and languages degree. she was rehearsing a National University Theatre Society production of The Last Five Years at the same time as the Coward double and plans to take part in the ANU Law Revue for the fourth time later in the year.