Noel Coward's Fallen Angels wait for love
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 25, 2009
DELICIOUS AGONY Adventure is about to arrive. |
After five years of marriage to their husbands, Londoners Julia and Jane (Julie George-Carlson and Julia Sheridan Langham) find their matrimonial emotions settling into a companionable affection — pleasant and dependable, but no longer full of fireworks. On this particular morning, however, their blithe emotional coasting shifts into edgy turbo-drive: They're expecting the arrival of a certain Frenchman, Maurice DuClos (Jonas Werner, elegantly), the great, reckless love of each woman's life. With their husbands out of the way on the greens, and the savvy maid Saunders (Andre Myles-Hunkin) handy with alcohol and unsought advice, there's plenty of room for neurotic misbehavior as they await their Frenchman in Fallen Angels. Accomplished USM professor William Steele directs Noel Coward's arch three-act comedy, in a taut and sharply appointed production by the Freeport Players.A woman with a pre-marriage romantic past is something of a scandal among Julia and Jane's upper-class 1920s set, and Freeport Players' production does a smashing job of immersing us in their just-so leisure culture: The flat Julia shares with her husband Fred (Hugh Barton, affably pompous) is understated but luxurious with its bone-colored furniture and Oriental carpets; its crystal sherry decanters, silver serving trays, and lovely antique telephone (Dorothy Glendinning on set design; Jean West and Sam Hunneman on props, all to great effect). The man of the house, Fred, is decorous but assuredly square in his baby blue-and-yellow argyle sweater-vest; his best friend, Jane's husband Willy (Adrian Fox, pompously affable) wears similarly un-suave patchwork pants and golf cap with a big yellow pouf (Julia Doughty and Valerie Tarantino's eloquent costuming). As for the ladies, Julia's Asian silk pajamas and Jane's flapper-styled dresses suggest hankerings for exotics and adventure that are belied by their proper English lives.
So all manner of madness, swooning, and cat-fighting ensues when there is real adventure to be had. The two friends glam themselves up, start in on the gin, and wait for Maurice with increasing desperation. Coward's comedy hangs on the ever-shifting interplay between the two women as they wait, and George-Carlson and Langham are a droll, canny, and dynamic pair. They develop two marvelously distinct characters, and emphasize the contrasts between the women's styles — Julia is prone to fretting and giggly loopiness, Jane more angular and fierce — that highlight both the compatibility and the underlying tension of their friendship. They also superbly delineate the effects of alcohol on head, heart, and loyalties, over the course of a long evening that spans from martinis, through a lot of Champagne (accompanying an exquisite multi-course meal served by Saunders), and finally to Benedictine. George-Carlson and Langham do a fine job sustaining and building the strain of the adventure, even into the third act, when Coward's writing goes a bit slack.
Related:
Review: Easy Virtue, Vintage mirth and vintage laughter, The best on the boards, More 
- Review: Easy Virtue
Jessica Biel stretches beyond her usual bimbo persona to attain some class in Stephan Elliott's adaptation of the Noël Coward play.
- Vintage mirth and vintage laughter
Coward is said to have written the play in three days, in the wake of a nerve-racking weekend at the country home of American actress Laurette Taylor and her British-playwright husband.
- The best on the boards
There have been a few muggings on the rialto this year.
- Love bites
Noël Coward may not have been born in a trunk, but he moved into one early.
- Party animals
Sir Noël Coward remains one of the most bankable of dramatists.
- Garry glitter
Youth may be “a stuff will not endure,” but Noël Coward’s Present Laughter — which takes its title from the Shakespearean ditty that tells us so — certainly does.
- Threesomes
Truth is in the eye of the beholder in See What I Wanna See , Michael John LaChiusa’s musically lush riff on stories by Japanese writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
- It's out of this world
Uys’s new show takes its title from two things that were illegal when the now-63-year-old gay white man was growing up in South Africa: democracy and sex.
- Blissful bustle
As vicarious fun goes, following about a party of squabbling hosts and befuddled guests at a country estate might not be much to recommend Hay Fever.
- Ghost story
Audiences just wanna have fun. Sometimes.
- Find your Bliss
In this lovely house in Cookham, England, life is only about bliss. About the Family Bliss, that is.
- Less
Topics:
Theater
, Noel Coward, Noel Coward, Valerie Tarantino, More
, Noel Coward, Noel Coward, Valerie Tarantino, William Steele, William Steele, Dorothy Glendinning, Sam Hunneman, Hugh Barton, Less
