FOUR STARS

Two great ladies of the British stage, Jenny Seagrove and Sara Crowe, transform before our eyes into a pair of staggering soaks as Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels continues on its merry way.

Written exactly 90 years ago, and one of the first hits of a playwright not yet called The Master, this daring slice of upper-crust life was not universally popular in its day.

One sometimes forgets how cutting edge in terms of risqué content Coward’s plays were — as the current West End revival of Private Lives demonstrates.

‘Vulgar’, ‘disgusting’, ‘degenerate’ and ‘vile’ were among the adjectives hurled by critics at Fallen Angels. The Daily Express — ever ready to harrumph, then as now — found the central characters behaving like “suburban sluts”.

The women are willowy Julia Sterroll (Seagrove) and more comfortably built Jane Banbury (Crowe), friends who live, each with husband, on different floors of a grand London mansion block.

Very grand indeed, to judge from the height of the ceiling, supported by a soaring Doric column, of the Sterrolls’ drawing room as it is stylishly presented in Paul Farnsworth’s design.

That being the case, one wonders why the couple concentrate so many of their activities in this one living space, beginning with the breakfast at which Julia bids an eager goodbye to hubby Fred (Daniel Hill).

He is off to play golf with Willy Banbury (Robin Sebastian), freeing-up Julia for a little adultery — maybe — with swoonworthy Frenchman Maurice (Philip Battley) with whom she had a fling before her marriage.

Quivering with excitement, she is not best pleased to discover that Jane, too, is a notch in Maurice’s bedpost — and planning to be in on the reunion.

As the women wait, they drink, and as they drink, they start to slur, bicker and fall over. It is all hilarious and fuelled, for once, with believably serious quantities of booze — large martinis, champagne and Benedictine.

Adding to the well-managed fun (director Roy Marsden) is Gillian McCafferty’s know-it-all maid whose Jeeves-like omniscience extends to the (very necessary) supply of a trademark hangover cure.

Until Saturday

Box office: 01242 572573
everymantheatre.org.uk