Review: Rachel Smith

Elegantly framed within the brightly lit and portrait studded living room of a 1920s English mansion, Bill Kenwright’s production of Noel Coward’s light-hearted comedy, Fallen Angels, brings to the stage a fierce combination of quick-witted satire and womanly vice which would burn the wings of any angel attempting to live the even then outdated image of a ‘perfect’ Victorian life.

Bored of their romantically stale marriages, Jane Banbury (Olivier award winner, Sara Crowe) and Julia Sterroll (BAFTA award winning Judge John Deed actress, Jenny Seagrove) join together for an evening of champagne drenched ‘toffery’ and chaotic ‘psychological romps’ in a bid to seduce their old French flame, womanizer Maurice Duclos (Philip Battley), while their passionless husbands contentedly play golf away from home.

Both leading ladies marvellously epitomise the ultimate desperate housewife figure, causing the minor delay and technical fault at the beginning of the performance to be forgotten within seconds of the “terribly sane” best friends gracing the stage with their witty one-liners and perfectly timed banter.

From serviette hats to vol-au-vont food fights, Fallen Angel’s drunken escapades and French grammar lessons serve to challenge the boundaries of marriage and friendship in a most provocative and hilariously glamour-centric manner which captivates audiences of all ages.

And it’s not just the deliciously dastardly dialogue that fuels this comedy’s ceaseless sense of emotional hysteria.

Blustering maid Saunders (Gillian McCafferty) proves something of a comedic centrepiece as she serves up more cultured surprises than oyster-clad dinners amidst her wry observations of the duo’s raucous antics.

But as the true stars of the show, it is Jane and Julia’s euphoric stage presence that proves contagious throughout, as the love-stuck ladies take a wonderfully cynical bite into the etiquettes of England’s ‘upper crust’ society in this humorous production.