Fallen Angels

There hasn’t been a major revival of Noël Coward’s formerly scandalous 1925 comedy in yonks, but here the Menier just squeezes a new production into its centenary year. The play concerns deliciously bitchy middle aged women Jane and Julia, who were both lovers of a man named Maurice prior to their own respective marriages (it’s the sex before marriage dimension that threatened to scandalise interwar Britain). Now their husbands are out of town and Maurice is back on the scene. Jane and Julia worry they won’t be able to resist his charms. But first they need to survive a boozy afternoon in each others’ presences. Christopher Luscombe directs Janie Dee and Alexandra Gilbreath in the Christmas revival.