Sheila Chisholm
BEST friends Julia Sterroll (Tamika Sewnarain) and Jane Banbury (Jana Botha) share their most intimate secrets. That’s how Jane knows she and Julia had a love affair - at different times of course - with the same dashing, suave, Frenchman Maurice Duclos (Alastair Duff).
Seven years later and five years into “boring” marriages to Frederick (Gary Green) and Willy (Mark Wilkes) both are flapping because Maurice, visiting London, wants to meet them. Their dilemma is that neither has told their husbands about the past indiscretion and are panicking about their reactions when they meet former lover-boy Maurice again. That’s because, even if, they are no longer in love with their husbands, they do still love them. But, as Jane said, “to put it mildly dear, we’re both ripe for a lapse.”
Set in London towards the end of the 1920’s in Julia and Frederick’s fashionable art deco apartment - bold delineated geometric shapes, strong colours and glitzy drapes et al – Fallen Angels is typical Noel Coward.
It’s witty, a comic satire about upper crust English society’s manners, behaviour and double standards. As Julia remarks “it seems unfair that men should have the monopoly of wild oats.”
Played out over three acts, we meet both husbands briefly during the first when (characteristically) neither thinks twice about leaving their wives for the weekend to go off golfing. It’s the two women who superbly carry this act. In clipped posh English accents, pitched to just the right level, the more level headed Sewnarain acted as a serene foil to ebullient Botha.
A remarkably accomplished actress with an innate understanding of Coward’s flamboyant mix of “cheek and chic” Botha is well able to deliver dialogue with the light and shade this master of English writing demands. Hilariously characterised, Botha’s tipsy act bubbled like the champagne she drank in copious amounts. It’s her ebullience that steals this show.
In her Masque debut, elegantly composed and quietly confident Sewnarain, is going to prove a major asset to the Amdram fraternity once she projects her voice beyond the footlights. For some reason Coward underscored Frederick and Willy’s roles.
His script gives neither Green nor Wilkes an opportunity to portray their parts as anything other than rather wooden, selfcentered husbands.
The opposite was true of larger-than-life Maurice. Even though he only arrives on the scene towards the end, Duff maximised this cameo gem to its fullest. No wonder he “woke” Frederick and Willy up to the danger of losing their wives to the romance Maurice offered.
Highly regarded as a director Barbara Basel’s approach and handling of Fallen Angels added her reputation. She has a talent for finding the depth in a script, then leading her cast into credible impersonations. Do go.
l 021 788 1898, bookings@ masquetheatre.com