After five years of marriage, Fred (Aasif Mandvi) and Julia (Rose Byrne) have reached “a remarkable sublime plane of affection and good comradeship.”  They love each other but they are not in love.  Says Fred to Julia, “I think it’s awfully silly of people to lead unhappy lives, don’t you?”  Cue Maurice Duclos (Mark Consuelos), Julia’s former lover, a veritable Maurice Chevalier, who is coming to London and reaches out for the first time in seven years.  Julia shared Maurice with her best friend, Jane (Kelli O’Hara), who is herself married to Fred’s best friend, Willy (Christopher Fitzgerald).  The women are torn between their curiosity, their guilt, and their arousal.

The current Roundabout Theatre revival of Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels is a whole lot of fun.  Few playwrights have better captured the smugness and the complacency of bored, wealthy English elites (other than, of course, Oscar Wilde).  It’s the sort of play where the women are smarter than the men and the servants are smarter than their employers.  Plus, the script gives a pair of actresses the chance to be horny in a way that is usually reserved only for actors.

The cast is good, though there is no standout performance like Kevin Kline’s in the 2017 revival of Coward’s Present Laughter.  There is also an extended scene in the middle where both Julia and Jane get drunk waiting for Maurice, and this could have used a little more focus—it is easy for actors to indulge in the excesses of intoxication, but most drunks don’t actually behave like cartoons.  The scenic design by David Rockwell is excellent, filling the Todd Haimes stage with beautiful Art Deco design.

Fallen Angels is the first Broadway revival of Noël Coward in nine years.  Let’s not wait that long again.  I could do three of these a year.

Fallen Angels runs through June 7th at the Todd Haimes Theatre.  227 W. 42nd Street  New York, NY.  1 hour 30 minutes.  No intermission. Photograph by Carol Rosegg.