By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK? ****

WHEN? Saturday 22 November (matinee), opens 2 December and runs through 21 February 2026 RUNTIME 120 minutes (including interval)

This Noel Coward comedy about 2 married women admitting to premarital sex and contemplating adultery was 1st performed in London 100 years ago with the theatre censor initially recommending it shouldn’t be staged because the morals of the female leads ‘would cause too great a scandal’.

• Read on for reasons including how this production is as frivolous, light and intoxicating as the champagne bubbles that its leading ladies savour so enthusiastically here

The censor changed its mind and the play is set in the London flat of married couple Frederick and Julia Sterroll in 1925 who row gently about their decade-long marriage losing some of its initial passion.

Julia is played by the gloriously gravelly voiced Janie Dee (The Motive And The Cue, National Theatre) and soon we learn both she and best friend Jane – a brilliantly game Alexandra Gilbreath – have both received a postcard from a French lover they both knew before they were married saying he’s coming to town and would like to meet.

Luckily for them their respective husbands are heading for Chichester and a boys’ golfing weekend setting the scene for a drunken evening as the women down cocktails and champagne while deciding what they should do and whether they want to meet their former love once more.

We haven’t seen a lot of Coward’s plays and this is a lesser known work but we did think how he’s clearly pushing on from Oscar Wilde and the inclusion of a maid, played with great relish by Sarah Twomey, who is better educated than those she’s serving went further than the current production of The Importance Of Being Earnest in the West End.

The Menier is still undergoing major building work and was reconfigured in a way we’ve never experienced before with the stage almost in the round and the audience at 2 of its 4 sides.

It draws us in to the intimacy of this beautifully recreated art deco flat and it’s hard not to get caught up in the comedy of 2 women preparing for a night of bad behaviour as they contemplate what they might like to do.

They’re 2 strong women who don’t like to give ground – last played in the West End by Felicity Kendal and Frances de la Tour in 2000 – and eventually after a tremendous quarrel 1 of them goes into the night leaving the other worrying that she might, finally, be meeting their former lover alone.

Fallen Angels ran at what is now the Gielgud Theatre in London’s West End for 4 months until August 1925 and doesn’t feel especially dated yet was clearly considered hugely forward thinking and challenging at the time it was written.

This production is as frivolous, light and intoxicating as the champagne bubbles that its leading ladies savour so enthusiastically here but it’s also important to remember how groundbreaking this material was when written.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Menier Chocolate Factory Tickets
• Have you seen a Janie Dee show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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