A century ago, Noël Coward was the shit. Aged just 25, he was in a phase of his career when he couldn’t stop scoring hits. And he wasn’t simply some young fogey with a nice line in upmarket witticisms: his 1924 breakthrough play The Vortex had scandalised polite society with its depiction of drug abuse (which was furthermore an allegory for the even more verboten subject of homosexuality). And in 1925 came Fallen Angels, which discussed sex outside marriage and the (admittedly hypothetical) prospect of an affair with an insouciant casualness that scandalised a stiff upper lipped interwar England.
But in 2025, it feels silly to pretend Fallen Angels is anything more than a nicely crafted old-fashioned pleasure. Or certainly in this straight-down-the-line period revival. Yes, it’s amusing, but it’s amusing in a ‘half the jokes are about how the maid is unexpectedly clever’, type of way.
Julia (Janie Dee) and Jane (Alexandra Gilbreath) are middle aged best friends. Julia is posh and poised. Jane is posh and shambolic. They are spending the weekend together while their distant husbands go off golfing.
But things get spicy, quickly: they receive word that Maurice, a Frenchman they both had sexual relationships with before marriage, is in town and intending to visit them. They freak out and start drinking heavily, convinced that Maurice will be wanting to play hide the saucisson with them both. And they’re sorely tempted to sample his charcuterie: it’s made clear that there’s not a lot going on in either of their marriages.
It would probably be unfair to say Christopher Luscombe’s production is basically the same as the play has always been done. He really wrings the innuendo out, in a way that I assume would have been pushing it in 1925. Gilbreath gives a deliciously dishevelled performance as Jane that feels like the most modern thing here by some degree.
You can see this play’s fingerprints over a century of popular culture about snarky middle-aged women, from All About Eve to Ab Fab. It’s enjoyable to watch these BFFs have their little crisis and get shitty with each other. But really, it’s a genteel museum piece. Sarah Twomey is very good in the role of overfamiliar maid Saunders, but it’s the ‘servants, right?’ humour that’s the most shocking thing about this play now.
And in 2025 it’s easier to appreciate the fact Coward was a class snob than that Fallen Angels was groundbreaking in its discussion of sex and female desire. It falls into the category of art that changed the world and consequently lost its edge. In this slick-but-conservative take it’s fun enough, but it was genuinely ahead of its time 100 years ago. Now it feels behind its time, and Lucombe’s production isn’t really bothered about playing catch-up.
