Tag: Noel coward

theatre

Not A Book: Fallen Angels

veritywilde

Happy Sunday everyone, double theatre recommendations this week for you as we head towards Christmas and I get out and about in the run up before the festivities start.

Fallen Angels by Noel Coward is 100 years old this year and this is the first revival in twenty five years. Jane and Julia are best friends and one morning after their husbands leave for a golfing weekend, they hear from a former boyfriend that he’s in London and is planning on paying them a visit. The news throws them into a panic and then into a state of wild excitement and recklessness. The upshot is chaos – very, very funny chaos.

I don’t know how the idea of women having had pre-marital sex and getting drunk will hit to younger audiences who just accept it as a fact of life, but I can see why this caused a huge stir when it was first produced – with the personal intervention of the Lord Chancellor being needed to get it the licence it needed to be performed. This version stars Janie Dee, who I loved in Follies and Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends but haven’t seen in a play since the Angela Lansbury revival of another Coward play Blithe Spirit more than a decade ago (gosh that’s scary). It was pretty early in previews when I saw it, but it was already in really good shape – although I suspect some of the physical comedy moments will have tightened up by now. I didn’t love it the way I did Private Lives, but that’s a very high bar (current count: four viewings of three different productions of it live and repeat viewings of one of those as well as TV version on streaming services) but if you like Coward, I think you’ll enjoy this. I saw it less than a week after I went to the Cecil Beaton exhibition and I think they’d make a pretty good double bill.

Fallen Angels is on at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 21 February 2026, although judging by how full it was the night I went (it looked sold out) you may want to buy your ticket sooner rather than later.

not a book

Not a Book: Private Lives

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This week we’re back in the theatre as we had a wonderful night at Private Lives last weekend and it’s been a while since I talked about a show.

For those who have never come across Noel Coward’s comedy, it is about a divorced couple who meet each other again on their honeymoons with their new spouses. Over the course of three acts you observe their stormy relationship – and the contrast with the people they have chosen for their second attempt at matrimony. At this point I’m going to take the opportunity to quote a bit of Gaudy Night at you, because it sums up the situation nicely, although as you can see Harriet doesn’t fancy a relationship like Elyot and Amanda’s at all – and of course it would be very tiring.

Otherwise one would get the sort of couple one had in Private Lives, who rolled on the floor and hammered one another when they weren’t making love, because they (obviously) had no conventional resources. A vista of crashing boredom, either way.

Gaudy Night, Dorothy L Sayers

In the new production at the Donmar Warehouse, Elyot is played by Stephen Mangan and Amanda by Rachael Stirling and they really do go for each other when they’re not intertwined on the sofa. The physical violence between the couple is the bit that can feel the most dated (it was written in 1930) but if the chemistry between the leads is right, they can carry you through it – you believe in the rollercoaster highs and lows of their relationship. In Stephen Mangan’s hands Elyot is more of a faded charmer with a wicked sense of humour than a dashing rake and Stirling’s Amanda is a woman who is fed up with being expected to stick to the conventions. It’s darker but it’s funny and the ending is brilliant.

It’s been a decade since I last saw Private Lives – that time with Toby Stephens and Anna Chancellor (which I enjoyed so much I went a second time with the family)and it’s a lot of fun to see a familiar text being polished up and exhibited afresh. The third act in particular has plenty of opportunities for interpretation. It was Him Indoors’ first time seeing any show more than once and it was fun to hear his thoughts on seeing something done differently. I think he preferred this version – I can’t decide, so maybe I should just go and see it again, again? Extraordinary how potent cheap music is…

Happy Sunday Everyone