(l-r) Sarah Overman and Rebecca Dines are two wives whooping it up in TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s production of Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels playing June 3 – 28 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.
FALLEN ANGELS: Farce/Comedy by Noël Coward. Directed by Robert Kelley. TheatreWorks, Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro Street, Mountain View, CA.
(650) 463-1960 or visit www.theatreworks.org. June 3—June 28, 2015
Fallen Angels needs a British touch at TheatreWorks [rating:3]
When a frequent theater companion, a Noel Coward aficionado, was invited to see Fallen Angels at TheatreWorks his response was a sharp, “Americans cannot do Noel Coward.” After a bit of cajoling and pointing out that all the criteria for a ‘smashing evening’ were in place he should reconsider. Artistic director Robert Kelley was directing, casting director Leslie Martinson had corralled the best of the Bay Area and had brought back the talented Rebecca Dines from Los Angeles, scenic designer J. B. Wilson had created a fantastic set and Fumiko Bielefeldt’s 1920s costume designs were stunning. The ‘smashing evening’ did not materialize.
What went wrong? Plenty. What should have been a sophisticated drawing room farce/comedy was directed as pure farce without the obligatory four doors for entrance and exits. The actors were often ‘mugging’ their lines and frequently almost unintelligible. The pace was non-stop hectic with directorial shtick rampant gaining only forced laughter. The savior of the evening was Tory Ross playing the all-knowing maid Saunders. You may remember her as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeny Todd. Finally, the brilliant dramatic actor Aldo Billingslea was miscast, and seemed embarrassed, in his 10 minute stint as a French lothario.
Noel Coward’s play Fallen Angels was written in 1925 and starred Talluah Bankhead in the London production. It first appeared on the Broadway stage in 1927 starring Fay Bainter and Estelle Winwood and reappeared in 1957 with Nancy Walker, Margaret Phillips and Alice Pearce (she of New Faces of 1952 fame and later as Alice Gooch in Auntie Mame) as the maid Saunders. It is a play for the women with the men as occasional sounding boards.
The two main women who dominate the stage for most of the two hour evening (with intermission) are Julia Sterroll (Sarah Overman) and Jane Banbury (Rebecca Dines). Julie is married to Fred (Mark Anderson Philips) and Jane to Willy (Cassidy Brown). The setting is the Sterroll flat. The two women are inseparable friends and both of their 5 year marriages are in the doldrums. Complications appear when both the ladies receive a note announcing that Maurice Dulcos is arriving.
Maurice is Frenchman that both ladies had met and were bedded by before their marriages. What should the ladies do? The first instinct was to run away and the second was to stay and face the music. That music played both on the grand piano upstage right or on the wind up gramophone brings back fond/disturbing memories.
To help make a decision they partake of cocktails and an entire bottle of champagne. “In vino veritas.” As the alcohol takes effect there is a marvelous, hilarious drunk scene to end all drunk scenes. Along with truth (“I would give in without a murmur.”) there is belligerence (“You abused me!”) and some fantastic slapstick that is worth the price of admission. It is delightful to watch Dines and Overman become increasingly unsteady with speech starting to slur and ending draped over the furniture. The play is written in three acts with the “drunk scene” taking up all of the second act and Maurice has not yet even arrived.
Maurice arrives, the husbands return and Coward has written some tricky double entre dialog that is acceptable to the husbands getting the ladies, so to speak, off-the-hook even though Maurice has taken the flat directly above the Sterroll’s flat.
CAST: Aldo Billingslea, Maurice Duclos; Cassidy Brown, Willy Banbury; Rebecca Dines, Jane Banbury; Sarah Overman, Julia Sterroll; Mark Anderson Phillips, Fred Sterroll; Tory Ross, Saunders.
Artistic Crew: Scenic Design J.B. Wilson; Costume Design Fumiko Bielefeldt; Lighting Design Steven B. Mannshardt; Sound Design Cliff Caruthers; Stage Manager Randall K. Lum.
Kedar K. Adour, MD
Courtesy of www.theatrewoldinternetmagazine.com.
Photos by Kevin Berne
