BROADWAY FOR KIDS

Let me confess at the outset – I love seeing (or reading) anything by Noël Coward.   I first read  Fallen Angels too many decades ago to count but have never seen a production.  So, I hope y’all understand that when I heard that BroadwayHD was live-streaming Roundabout Theatre's June 5 performance from the Todd Haimes Theatre in NYC, I absolutely had to re-subscribe and tune in.  Streaming a recording is a beautiful thing, but live-streaming an actual performance, seeing it as its Broadway audience sees it, makes my distance from New York (and from Atlanta, for that matter) vanish like the ephemeral construct I wish it were.

 

Fallen Angels premiered in London in 1925 after a protracted battle with the crown censors, who found its energetic leading ladies morally bankrupt, despite being happily married and of the aristocratic set. Thankfully, the Lord Chamberlain over-ruled the censor, saying, "I take the view that the whole thing is so much unreal farcical comedy, that subject to a few modifications in the dialogue it can pass." And, now, for over a hundred years, we’ve had this delightfully sparkling confection of a play, filled to the brim with Coward’s signature dialogue and (misbehaving) characters, and Roundabout Theatre has seen fit to stage a 100th anniversary production, directed by the talented Scott Ellis (who gave us the James Earl Jones You Can’t Take it With You twelve years ago.  The production is closing on Sunday (will it win any of its 5 nominated Tony’s?), so this Live-Stream cannot be more welcome.

Julia and Jane are lifelong friends, wealthy Londoners safely ensconced in marriages with stuffy proper Englishmen.  To say the spark is gone from their marriages would be true, but there remains a comfortable companionship, and neither has ever faced a temptation to stray.  Their husbands are off to Chichester for a weekend of golf (“It’s Chichester- you’ll only need the irons.”), leaving the ladies to spend the day doing what wealthy London Ladies (of a certain age) usually do.  Drink a lot of champagne and martinis and schmooze.  It turns out both had a passionate liaison with the same beguiling Frenchman, Maurice Duclos, before they met their current husbands, and M. Duclos is coming for a visit. Will either (or both) rekindle the old romance and take advantage of their husbands’ absence?

 

If you know Noël Coward, I suspect you know the answer.

 

So, in Act One, we see them frantically plot their escape from London to avoid any temptation.  In Act Two, they share a quintessentially Cowardesque dinner and get progressively more drunk, then more drunk, then even more drunk, finally exploding in an all-out verbal melee that sends them staggering off in opposite directions.  Act Three is the morning after, when hangovers rule, husbands come home, and the longed-for (and frankly idealized) Maurice arrives, bursting at the seams with manly suavity and continental charm (of the unstuffy unhusbandlike kind)   Add to this mix a loquacious maid (“Saunders is such a treasure”) who has apparently experienced everything, gone everywhere, and in her working-class way, become more adept at every skill under the sun (accept perhaps singing – though she does know when someone else is off-key).

 

Some purists may take umbrage at  Mr. Ellis’s inclusion of broad physical comedy (*), including a marvelous bit with a pair of two-foot-long cigarette holders and an unsteady lighter. I loved the physical stuff and found myself laughing hysterically – what is it about elegant British women behaving like Jersey Shore “real housewives?”  Why do we giggle mindlessly at the spectacle?   Why ask why?  Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

 

Kelli O’Hara and Rose Byrne dominate this play as Julia and Jane.  Their husbands (Fred and Willy) are played by comic Assif Mandvi (credibly pompous) and Christopher Fitzgerald (pleasantly inane), the maid, Saunders is Tracee Chimo, and our visiting Parisian, Maurice Duclos is Mark Consuelos (Riverdale’s Hiram Lodge); all are kept (mostly) off stage until they’re needed for some silly plot development or other.  This play is, at heart, a verbal free-for-all between the leading ladies, who both scored Tony nominations for their work (and will therefore likely cancel each other out).  Their dialogue is pure drivel of the finest sort, delightfully urbane,  too often clueless.  “You know the problem with parenting?   Children!”

 

For the record, the dialogue is so delightfully witty and lyrical, the frequent forays into un-translated French are funny in their own way, even welcome.  (**)

 

Also up for Tony’s are the set by David Rockwell and the costumes by Jeff Mahshie.  The set is the London apartment of Julia and Fred and is of a spacious height that puts mere cathedral ceilings to shame.  More arena than apartment, it is exaggerated and soaring and backed by a large window showing us a London street (well, the roofs and towers of it) in rain and shine, day and night (kudos also to Lighting Designer Kenneth Posner for keeping the quality of light true to the weather and day/night dichotomy we see through the window).  The gowns by Mr. Mahshie are truly works of art that the actresses bring to their own sort of independent drunken life.  Ms. Byrne’s Act II “battle” with her scarfs and inserts is pure genius.

 

This is a three-act comedy performed without intermission, yet still coming in at a brisk hour and a half, thanks  to a breathtakingly rapid pace (modeled to my eyes on the rapid fire delivery in His Girl Friday and other screwball comedies), and to clever transitions – a look at Fred and Willy “at golf” between Acts One and Two, and Saunders cleaning up after the bedlam (and singing Coward’s “Any Little Fish”) between Acts Two and Three.

 

This production is available for streaming through June 19, and I plan on watching it again.

 

Fallen Angels is early Coward at his best, a gossamer-thin, delightfully elegant profiterole that showcases the talents of Kelli O’Hara and Rose Byrne.   I can’t recommend it enough. 

 

    --  Brad Rudy  (BKRudy@aol.com    #RoundaboutTheatre  #Fallen Angels    #BroadwayHD)

 

(*)  I have fond memories of working on a production of Private Lives in which the local reviewer took us to task for the same thing by writing, “It’s Coward!  Don’t just do something, stand there!”  Or words of that sort – I’m too retired to break out the old clippings scrapbook and check.

 

(**) Also welcome is Ms. Byrne’s goofy “fright wig” for Act III after a restless night at a cheap hotel and a very rainy morning.  She did much same delightful thing as Alice in You Can’t Take it With You, giving that usually drab character a Sycamore edge that showed she really does belong in that family.