Noel's angels

In Fallen Angels, the current production at the Leanor and Alvin Segal theatre, three strong women control and manipulate three weak men. Though this power structure is present in the text, written in 1925 by gay British playwright Noël Coward, the casting decisions highlight the subversive powers of the female characters. Director Diana Leblanc’s production does justice to the script’s commanding women, but it does not explore the homosexual undertones available in Coward’s text.

Divided into three acts, the play follows a week-end in the lives of best friends Julia (Goldie Semple) and Jane (Brigitte Robinson). Their husbands Fred (Noel Burton) and Willy (Tim Hine), also best friends, are out of London on a golfing trip for much of the play. This leaves Julia and Jane to fret over the impending visit of Maurice (Paul-Antoine Taillefer), a young Frenchman with whom they both had romantic episodes before marrying. The nerve-wracked and drunken hysterics of Julia and Jane are tempered throughout by the hilariously undermining maid Saunders (Clare Coulter).

The second act is the strongest, book-ended between a first act that is mostly set-up and a disappointing and hung-over climax. In the second act we only see the three women, whose exchanges are energetic and snappy. As Julia and Jane become more and more drunk throughout the second act, their schemes and accusations become proportionately more preposterous. This is when Fallen Angels is at its best. We imagine that this is how Coward, the heir to a tradition of excess and exuberance in British theatre that began with Oscar Wilde, would have wanted to see his play performed. These moments of hilarity, however, are too heavily relied upon to provide the bulk of the play’s energy.

The looming return of the husbands and supposedly climactic appearance of Maurice fail to maintain the standard set in the second act. This may be due to deliberately uneven casting choices. The weaker actors are upstaged by the actresses, just as the naïve husbands are manipulated by their wives. The ending, as a result, is disappointing because we are never convinced that the husbands could have outsmarted their wives. Leblanc’s production, furthermore, fails to acknowledge more complex homosocial bonds between Fred and Willy, or Julia and Jane. A more daring staging could draw attention to activities other than golf that the men might partake in during a week-end out of town, and away from their disenchanting marriages. Similarly, more could be made of the relationship between Julia and Jane. The pair has been best friends since before either married, yet in this production their only shared experiences seem to be lacklustre marriages and distant romances with Maurice.

Uneven acting and too-conventional direction aside, Fallen Angels is fun and beautiful. The consistent scene-stealing of the maid Saunders is delightful and refreshing. Between the dramatic antics of Julia and Jane, and the stuffy ignorance of Fred and Willy, Coulter’s Saunders is quietly and cleverly subversive. Despite her working-class position she is more intelligent, cultured, and worldly than the upper-class employers she answers to. The ease with which she gets her way and points out the foolishness of her economic superiors is hilarious and endearing.

Other highpoints of the play are its luscious set and costumes. The entire play takes place in Julia and Fred’s London flat, and is located sometime between the year Coward wrote it, 1925, and the beginning of the Second World War. Period furniture and decorative details such as a collection of vases, bright colours, elegant mouldings, and Expressionist paintings create an atmosphere of abundant luxury. Set and Costume designer Michael Gianfrancesco provides the characters with costumes to match. Fred and Willy appear in subdued grays and browns which are nonetheless chic. Julia is appropriately dressed in a series of stylish and tasteful green numbers, until her hangover forces her into a more sober brown dress. Jane, meanwhile, spends the play in a series of increasingly loud pink dresses which compliment her personality and energy.

Though in many ways a conservative production, Fallen Angels is beautiful, and at its most entertaining when Julia, Jane, and Saunders have free run of the stage. While the more implicit subplots of the relationships between Fred and Willy, or Julia and Jane, are not fleshed out, the latter two in particular are given life by spirited performances from Semple, Robinson, and Coulter. Despite the neglected subtexts, Coward’s plays are primarily about beautiful people having a marvellously entertaining time. Leblanc’s production, in this respect, is successful for about two thirds of its runtime.

Note: This article was published on 2 November 2006 in the McGill Daily and can be found on that paper's website here.