Fallen Angels has appeared only twice on Broadway since its stateside premiere in 1927, two years after the lustful comedy’s London premiere cemented Noël Coward as England’s drawing room enfant terrible. A sort of proto-Godot where two society women drink themselves into a stupor waiting for an old lover to arrive while their husbands are away, it was nearly censored by the office of the Lord Chamberlain for its sexual frankness. (That kind of historical description usually indicates that perhaps someone showed some ankle). But 99 years later the play remains hilariously horny and startlingly modern, and Scott Ellis’s champagne cocktail of a revival has the exact right ingredients: complete faith in the material, drop-dead deluxe design, and the sugar-and-bubbles combination of Oscar-nominated actor Rose Byrne and stage veteran Kelli O’Hara.
The two are stars of elastic, compulsively watchable talent, and the unexpectedness of their pairing only serves their dynamic in this expert staging of Coward’s play, as their characters goad each other’s worst impulses on until they come into conflict with their own. Their performances work – brilliantly – in the converse, with Byrne’s knack for bawdiness and O’Hara’s born gentility swirling around to intoxicating effect.
