‘Fallen Angels’ Broadway Review: Rose Byrne & Kelli O’Hara Are Absolutely Fabulous In Sparkling Noël Coward Comedy

Noël Coward’s delightful, rarely produced 1925 comedy Fallen Angels is the sort of Broadway fare that gives critics ample reason to use descriptors like “fizzy” and “intoxicating” and “dizzying,” all apt in capturing the pleasures of its airy sophistication and raucous, gutbucket smart, rich-ladies-get-drunk laughs. What was true in the Jazz Age remains so, as the Roundabout Theatre Company production starring the terrific Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara, opening tonight, so bountifully proves.

A showcase for the even-then legendary Tallulah Bankhead back in the day, Fallen Angelsonce controversial for its casual depictions of female libido and not-so-wifely infidelity, has been produced on Broadway only twice before – 1927 and 1956 – and a TV movie adaptation starring Joan Collins and Susannah York aired in 1974.

But the play’s influence exceeds its visibility. The beloved British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous mightn’t exist without Fallen Angels. Too many Real Housewives to count have lifted the drunken acerbity and giddy backstabbing of Coward’s heroines, though with considerably less wit and whether they know it or not. Fans of ’70s sitcoms might even remember an excellent Season 3 episode of Norman Lear’s Maude (“Lovers In Common”) that is a beat-for-beat distillation of the play, with Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan in the role-equivalents of the characters now luminously inhabited by O’Hara and Byrne.

Under the sure direction of Scott Ellis and given a lush, gorgeous staging by Roundabout and some of Broadway’s best designers – David Rockwell, sets, sumptuous; Jeff Mahshie, costumes, deep oppulance; Kenneth Posner, ever-so-flattering lighting – Fallen Angels is a most welcome springtime treat, a smart, breezy entry in Broadway’s chaotically busy pre-Tony season.

While Fallen Angels first and last belongs to the splendidly attired ladies-in-waiting for the return of a long-ago lover, Ellis has surrounded them by a dandy ensemble, with Christopher Fitzgerald and Aasif Mandvi as the baffled husbands, Tracee Chimo as the wisecracking, buttinsky of a maid (a character that would inform decades of similar comic servants) and, as the lusted-after, late-arriving sexy man-from-the-past, Live With Kelly & Mark co-host and former soap hunk Mark Consuelos sending up his daytime persona to crowd-pleasing effect in his Broadway debut.

Aasif Mandvi, Christopher Fitzgerald

Joan Marcus

The premise is as simple and convoluted as the farce commands: Lifelong friends and impeccably attired sophisticates Julia (O’Hara) and Jane (Byrne), settled into companionable if passion-free marriages (to Mandvi’s Fred and Fitzgerald’s Willy, respectively), have received word that a man from both of their pasts is soon to visit London from his Paris home, and he wants to see these former flings for reasons that the women can only dream about.

With the husbands off for a golf outing, Julia and Jane (well attended to by Chimo’s martini-mixing maid Saunders) get decked out in their evening finest and wait impatiently at Julia’s luxe apartment (Jane lives upstairs) for the mystery man Maurice to arrive. What begins as sisterly bonding over their shared perhaps not-so-dead passion for the suave ladies man devolves, with each slug of gin, into increasingly vicious (and uproariously hilarious) competition.

“I suppose you think your mind is a lovely gift basket filled with mixed fruit with a bow on top?,” a tipsy and getting tipsier Jane snipes at Julia, who responds, “Better than being an old sardine tin with a few fins left in it.” By the time Julia deadpans an understated “I wish you’d go home, Jane” both actors have the audience howling at every teeth-baring jab, exquisitely executed.

If Coward’s blithe dialogue and urbane wordplay remains captivating, so too is the physical humor on display: It’s always amusing to watch the cultivated slide into incivility, even better when those slides are made literal. O’Hara clammers up the set’s Art Deco staircase like an inebriated crab, and Byrne, an exemplary comedian who, at one point in the reviewed performance seemed to have gotten an unplanned laugh from her costar after taking a too-large bite of some scrumptious-looking chocolate concoction and playing it off beautifully, has the funnybone instinct that allows a gorgeous person to revel in unflattering deshabille. Shout-out to hair-and-wig designers David Brian Brown and Victoria Tinsman for a morning-after sight gag nearly as show-stopping as Carol Burnett’s “Went With The Wind” curtain-rod dress.

O’Hara, Mark Consuelos, Byrne

Joan Marcus

Following the play’s extended raison d’être drunk scene – which includes a wonderfully directed and performed bit involving lengthy cigarette holders and an uncooperative flame – Fallen Angels moves more decidedly into farce, with missing persons, misunderstandings, suspicious husbands and hung-over wives desperate to reclaim order and a modicum of dignity.

Enter Consuelos’ Maurice, of course, just in time to put a capper on all the scheming and on this show. Rockwell’s set design will have one last chance to reclaim our attention, and it does so deliciously, with the suggestion that the old friends conclude this latest escapade with a blissfulness equal to what they’ve gifted us.

Title: Fallen Angels
Venue: Broadway’s Todd Haimes Theatre
Written By: Christmas Coward
Directed By: Scott Ellis
Cast: Rose Byrne, Kelly O’Hara, Tracee Chimo, Mark Consuelos, Christopher Fitzgerald, Aasif Mandvi
Running Time: 1 hr 30 min (no intermission)

The misfortunes endured by Linda, the frayed nerve portrayed by Rose Byrne in last year’s unhinged comic drama “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” include but are not limited to: a mysteriously ill child, a surly absentee husband, a malevolent hamster and a cosmic black hole in her bedroom ceiling. Even watching the film feels harrowing, a sort of two-hour panic attack by proxy.
So you can understand why Byrne sought out a project in a lighter register this spring, even as “If I Had Legs” continues to earn her some of the biggest accolades of her career, including a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination.
While many of her fellow Oscar nominees lean into the private screenings and ritual glad-handing of Hollywood’s peak campaign season, she’ll be at home in New York rehearsing for her role in a Broadway revival of a rarely seen 1925 Noël Coward play called “Fallen Angels” alongside Kelli O’Hara, Tracee Chimo and Mark Consuelos at the Roundabout Theater Company. Performances, at the Todd Haimes Theater, are scheduled to begin March 27 and run through early June.
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“The delight of trying to bring a farcical comedy to the stage felt like such an opportunity and a lovely antidote creatively, and that’s something I’ve really been craving,” said Byrne, who last performed onstage six years agoin “Medea.”
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Rose Byrne sits in a chair, turning at the waist to face the camera.
“It feels so fresh to do this play and be in New York,” Rose Byrne said. “It’s such a different skill being onstage. It’s so rigorous, particularly high comedy. There’s a different sort of energy required.”
Comedy, as fans who are familiar with her three-decade career know, is hardly foreign territory. Her turns in box-office hits like “Bridesmaids,” “Neighbors” and “Get Him to the Greek” helped to establish the Australian actress as a low-key force in films in which her symmetrical, almost doll-like beauty proved a compelling stealth vehicle for cracked and giddily profane humor.