FALLEN ANGELS

Review by Celia Ipiotis

Oh, the language and attitudes were so urbane in Noel Coward’s  Fallen Angels at the Todd Haimes Theatre. Surrounded by David Rockwell’s divine set featuring art deco furniture, wall paper, and liquor caddy, the ladies in question knew it was time for a drink. 

Upper class wives and best friends, Kelly O’Hara (Julia Sterroll) and Rose  Byrne(Jane Banbury) both woke up with a premonition that a former lover would descend, and so he did– unexpectedly announcing his arrival in London.

This French (naturally) lover, Maurice (Mark Consuelos) met the gals (before their subsequent marriages) while vacationing in Italy and from that time, both equated Italy with passion and perhaps unbridled sex. Now seven years into their marriages, Julia and Jane longed for a splash of sexual enticement.

Prepared to play golf, the husbands Fred (Aasif Mandvi) in a goldenrod sweater and  Willy (Christopher Fitzgerald) trussed in a tan, checked suit and matching red beret and socks (by Jeff Mahshie) trotted out for a game or two.   But before he departed, Julia quipped to Fred that after seven years of marriage, they certainly did not experience their earlier “heated” relations. Thrown a bit off-center, Fred questioned his wife’s sudden interest in distinguishing between “loving” someone and being “in love.”

Left alone in the swank apartment, the ladies began speculating on the whereabouts of their former paramour and when he might appear. Brightly directed by Scott Ellis, aural and physical comedy conspired in this madcap excursion. O’Hara’s full, round voice contrasted against Rose’s thinner, reedier quips that frequently shot  into the higher registers. Bound by a keen commraderie, they neverthelss progressively got drunker and drunker while speculating on “his” whereabouts.

Amping up the laughs, the no-nonsense maid Saunders (Tracee Chimo), kept banging in and out of the swinging door supplying a clipped dictionary of advice. And like the dinging of a clock, whenever the phone rang, Julia and Jane climbed (literally) over each other to be the first to grab the phone, should it be Maurice (who ultimately makes an appearance).

As the day progressed, they got looser and looser until Jane unflatteringly flung herself in despair on the high back chair, then slid down the front, face first, into a zany collapse of decorum. Punctuated by Saunders’ staccato exits and entrances, the antics accelerated at a high velocity.

Fallen Angels, a 1926 comedy that was scandalous in its time, displayed a giddy champagne jaunt through the vagaries of social niceties and marital ennui with some classy ladies of the theater.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Celia Ipiotis

Photos by Joan Marcus