Some revivals really do need the drama of their original setting. Noël Coward’s comedy of (wishful) female infidelity is one such play, first performed 100 years ago and brought to life now as a period piece that offers insight into the mores of the day – and Coward’s fearlessness in the face of bourgeois morality. Almost banned by the UK censor, it was deeply shocking then, and amusing now, with its two interwar-era “girls behaving badly” on a champagne-fuelled night before and regretful morning after.
All of Coward’s preoccupations are here, from disappointment and distance in a pair of marriages to sexual yearning and unfaithfulness – even if the latter is not realised. Except now it is two women plotting it together. The play kicks off at the residence of Julia (Janie Dee) and Fred Steroll (Richard Teverson), over breakfast, when a newspaper notice of a divorce is read out. A sign of things to come?
