Noel Coward’s once-scandalous comedy of prigs amid the petit fours will get a deliciously tart revival at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Firm, crisply directed by former inventive director Tom Ross.
Marriage and sophistication are just some of the social establishments Coward places below the microscope on this frothy Twenties farce that revels within the raciness of the Roaring Twenties.
That’s when these two glittering divas (spot-on costumes by Maggie Morgan) sip champagne and plot improprieties that might make a TikTok sexpert blush. The pleasant elocution of their dry-as-martini witticisms (dialect coach Nancy Carlin) provides to the thrill of this era piece.
When their mutual ex, Maurice (Joel Roster), involves city, the shtick hits the fan as the women who lunch confront their long-suppressed emotions for the Frenchman. Roster gyrates up a storm as Maurice wiggles his approach again into the image, indulging in double entendres astride the infant grand.
Coward additionally pokes enjoyable on the energy wrestle between the higher and decrease courses as Julia tries and fails to maintain the assistance, the officious maid Saunders (a hilarious flip by Cindy Goldfield), in her place.
The actors faucet right into a comedy gold mine right here. Kantor appears to be channeling Maggie Smith in a symphony of snubs and barbs over the long-lost lover. Goldfield has a discipline day because the jack-of-all-trades servant. And Austin employs his jowls to nice comedian impact because the insufferably aristocratic husband.
Coward makes the ladies the celebrities of the present, the boys are merely props. This cheeky romp revolves round their lust and wishes, their unchained sexuality, breezily pertaining to erotic encounters from out of doors sexcapades to ménage à trois.
Make no mistake, the manufacturing is just not good. The primary act suffers from far too leisurely a tempo, however that doesn’t diminish the enjoyable of all of it. That is pure light-hearted escapism that’s sure to spice up the field workplace in arduous occasions.
Actually, in an period when ladies’s rights are as soon as once more a matter of controversy, there’s one thing fairly liberating about watching ladies from 100 years in the past placing their very own wants first. The husbands might harrumph however Coward lets the wives have the final snicker and it’s a hearty one.
“Fallen Angels”
Written by Noël Coward, directed by Tom Ross
By: Nov. 17
The place: Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St. Berkeley
Particulars: $38-$68; auroratheatre.org/fallen-angels
