I had been looking forward to Fallen Angels at the Todd Haimes Theatre. A play by Noel Coward starring Kelli O’Hara and Rose Byrne sounded like a great way to spend an evening. Unfortunately it wasn’t. Under Scott Ellis’s direction the women overact, using exaggerated English accents that quickly became annoying.
They play two friends, Julia Sterroll (O’Hara, right in photo) and Jane Banbury (Byrne) , who had an affair with the same man, Maurice Duclos (Mark Consuelos) years ago, before they were married, and are now expecting him to visit. In the dining-drawing room of Julia’s spectacular London apartment (fabulous Art Deco set by David Rockwell), dressed in Jeff Mahshie’s gorgeous gowns, they booze it up until they are staggering. O’Hara is a marvel at physical comedy. She collapses so completely and quickly that it was as if she has no bones. Crumpled on the floor she looks like a human puddle. It’s also a hoot watching them try to navigate their lighter to light their cigarettes at the end of long holders.
When he does show up, two days later, making the appearance of a dashing Frenchman, they learn that he has taken the apartment between theirs, which are two floors apart. The women are thrilled to go see it, leaving behind their dull, startled, husbands, Fred Sterroll (Aasif Mandvi) and Willy Banbury (Christopher Fitzgerald) who soon hear the sounds of laughter and frivolity drifting down. Lighting designer Kenneth Posner has the chandelier do a nifty little dance as the good time of the reconnect lovers picks up speed.
Coward wrote the play when he was only 24. It premiered in London in 1925 and hasn’t been seen on Broadway in 70 years. To me it was just 90 minutes of silliness but the audience was laughing uproariously throughout.
No comments:
Post a Comment