Fallen Angels 18 March - 22 March 2014 Milton Keynes Theatre

Noel Coward's Fallen Angels first opened in 1925 - its story line of two, ever so slightly bored middle aged housewives, who's perfect lives are shaken up by the arrival of an ex-lover of them both, still seems scarily fresh and relevant.

The play is set in a time where the "little women" sat prettily around waiting, whilst the men strode off to their thing...and in this case, it's a weekend of golfing.

However, our respectable housewives Julia (Jenny Seagrove) and (Jane) Sara Crowe do more than sitting pretty awaiting the return of their respective husbands.  The pair find out that the man that they had both had a romantic interlude with before marrying their husbands is back in the country and about to make a visit!  The expectation of seeing him sends them both into a heady spin, both pretending that they are not at all excited by the thought of having him seduce them once more.

To cope with the sheer panic that befalls them, they both agree to just run away, as neither of of them would trust themselves around him.  Unfortunately, they don't manage to flee...as they sit down to dinner and have a few too many glasses of bubbly...and get totally steaming drunk!  The pair share memories of their time with Maurice Duclos (Philip Battley) revisiting the feelings that they both had and secretly would love to feel again...

Seagrove and Crowe make the most of the scenes of drunkeness (sometimes a little too much where it started to look contrived) However, the pair bounce cleverly off of each other with slapstick style comedy.

The other characters seem really just to bolster the two leads.  Tim Wallers (husband, Fred) and Robin Sebastian (husband, Willy) give robust and believable performances.

Fallen Angels is definitely a play worth watching, the audience chuckled loudly and left the theatre pleasantly surprised just how good it was, and I totally agree.

Lily B X