You see it in the fevered manner Rose Byrne shakes her feathered fan and the clenched smile of Kelli O’Hara. It’s additionally simmering below the floor of the glowing banter in regards to the canals of Venice, completely good husbands and ravenous appetites.
This highly effective drive, the comedian engine driving the motion of “Fallen Angels,” a riotous revival of certainly one of Noël Coward’s early performs, is lust. The funniest, most flamable form: suppressed lust. To be as exact because the deathlessly witty jokes littered by this play on the newly reopened Todd Haimes Theater, the transgressive lust of proper-seeming, upper-crust English wives struggling by stale marriages.
Wielding cigarette holders that appear to get longer each act, Jane Banbury (Byrne) and Julia Sterroll (O’Hara) lavish consideration on their very own ever-so-beastly want inside a grand condo belonging to Sterroll over the course of two days in 1928. “To put it mildly, dear,” O’Hara says with a blasé tone. “We’re both ripe for a lapse.”
Such quintessentially British horniness is activated in essentially the most stereotypical manner doable: A Frenchman has come to city. His title is Maurice (Mark Consuelos), and when these giddily flamboyant actresses pronounce his title in plummy accents and elongated vowels, the emphasis is on “More.” They each had affairs with him earlier than they have been married. With spouses out of city on a golf journey, what else is there to do however placed on a robe, get drunk and as much as no good?
This ebullient farce scandalized critics and censors when it premiered a century in the past, which, as will shock nobody who follows tales of cancel tradition, helped flip it right into a buzzy hit. Today its ethical issues (Sex earlier than marriage? Gasp!) could seem dated, however its spirit, to not point out wit, are totally trendy.
“Fallen Angels,” which hasn’t been on Broadway for 70 years, has lengthy been thought of certainly one of Coward’s second-tier efforts, a greater car for stars than the precise play. Scott Ellis’s assured manufacturing makes a persuasive case for it, however make no mistake: The dynamite performances of Byrne and O’Hara are the primary occasion.
Comedically, they’re intrepid, touchdown each joke, but additionally unearthing many new ones between traces. They play off one another with very good chemistry and ship bon mots with the identical snap. Their sly insults (“I should be following her around and picking up all the names she dropped”) come at you rapidly, spoken with a rat-a-tat tempo. (If there have been Tony nominations for voice coach, Kate Wilson deserves one.) They drop suitcases on the similar second and as a substitute of a hug, they flutter fingers at one another like they’re enjoying dueling pianos. Their friendship is not only the core of the play. It’s the topic.
O’Hara (“The Gilded Age”) is extra wise, dry, pragmatic if not barely sociopathic on the subject of the sentiments of others. She tells her husband, Fred (Aasif Mandvi), that they’re not “in love” with offhandedness, then later dismisses the dialog as a enjoyable “psychological romp.”
Actors performing Coward can get carried away by the seen-it-all nonchalance of his wit. Just as a result of characters are bored doesn’t imply they’re boring. This is a younger man’s play (Coward wrote it earlier than he turned 25), with all of the fearless meanness, irreverence and superficiality that entails. And Byrne and O’Hara carry an apt and rambunctious power to it.
In scene-stealing roles in “Bridesmaids” or “Spy,” Byrne, certainly one of our most interesting comedian actors, deployed her sleek magnificence to play supercilious delight and even villainy. But in final 12 months’s Oscar-nominated breakthrough performance as a mom coming unglued in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” she confirmed extra layers, displaying depth, poignancy and terrifying hazard.
Following this up by enjoying a frisky spouse in a Coward play might look like a departure, and it clearly is in a bubblier fashion, getting laughs by gangly dance strikes and utilizing her serviette as a shawl. But there’s additionally continuity. Byrne’s efficiency comprises a violence that may take you unexpectedly. She has a determined neediness that slowly, regularly comes out over the course of an intoxicating drunk scene the place her aggression emerges, barking at her good friend by slurred assaults. O’Hara counters with a distinct comedian power, doing elaborately gradual descents down a staircase and a lounge chair, amongst different close to pratfalls.
When her husband calls her “unhinged,” O’Hara corrects him, taking pictures again: “I’m perfectly hinged.”
Byrne extra clearly isn’t, and watching her collapse, and conflict with O’Hara, is mesmerizing.
Tracee Chimo, because the maid, Saunders, supplies a formidable counterweight to the leads, discovering laughs in odd cackles and the oddly effortful manner she fluffs a pillow. In one of many funnier bits of the present, the temperature of the room shifts when she enters, because the wives clumsily pivot from speak of adultery.
“Whoever decided that undergarments should be white?” O’Hara says, straining to strike a considerate tone. To which Byrne responds by musing: “I often wonder if the ocean would be deeper if there were no sponges.”
When Saunders leaves, they return to the good things. Showing up early and late, as needed plot gadgets, the husbands are pointedly marginal, dopey buffoons of various stripes. Mandvi performs Fred Sterroll (a pun on sterile?) as a pompous bore, whereas Christopher Fitzgerald’s Willy Banbury has a puppy-dog dopiness.
The sexism of this class of males is clarified, however not underlined. Everything is stored gentle and fashionable. Jeff Mahshie’s Roaring Twenties costumes (the hats! the gloves!) are supreme enjoyable. And David Rockwell’s well-appointed Art Deco set makes essentially the most of its staircase and chandelier.
Most importantly, this 90-minute manufacturing (the proper size for a comedy) has mastered the proper tempo. It begins quick, then places on the brakes for the enjoyable of Byrne and O’Hara consuming themselves foolish and salty. Patience is afforded on the subject of the intense enterprise of vamping, pratfalls, humorous hairdos. Ellis’s staging leans into the frivolity, however its actual feat is to placed on a good leisure that someway has the looseness of a hangout comedy.
It wasn’t that way back that comedy appeared like an endangered species on Broadway. Perhaps due to the regular drumbeat of grim information, producers have been giving viewers extra amusing choices. “Oh, Mary!” bursts with enervating silliness. “Becky Shaw” delivers darkish laughs that catch in your throat. “Dog Day Afternoon” exudes anxiety-ridden humor. But if you happen to’re in search of pure escapist enjoyable to supply some rapid reduction, “Fallen Angels” can’t be beat.
Fallen Angels
Through June 7 on the Todd Haimes Theater, Manhattan; roundabouttheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour half-hour.
