Season Select: Fallen Angels

Fallen Angels

By Noël Coward

Directed by Shannon Cochran

Fast Facts

Playing: Hill Theatre | June 13 - October 3
Featuring: Nate Burger, Phoebe González, Colleen Madden, Sam Luis Massaro, Ronald Román-Meléndez, Laura Rook
Genre: 20th Century Comedy
Last Seen at APT: First time!
Go If You Liked: Ring Round the Moon (2024), Rough Crossing (2021), Blithe Spirit (2011)

About Fallen Angels

Noël Coward’s sparkling wit returns to the Hill for the first time since 2015. Jane and Julia are happily married to charming men when a message arrives from a former flame, sending their perfect lives into a tizzy. It appears a man with whom they’d each had a passionate tryst in the past is planning a visit, and they are both questioning whether they can – or want to – withstand his charms. As the husbands golf, the ladies plot and plan over copious glasses of champagne, with some “help” from a very worldly housekeeper, while awaiting the arrival of their former lover in this decadent and utterly entertaining comedy.

Pop the champagne and keep it flowing - Noël Coward is back at APT! The last time this prolific and wickedly witty playwright’s work was featured in the season line-up was all the way back in 2015 with Private Lives. Now, a decade later, it’s time for a triumphant return.

Premiering at London’s Gielgud Theatre (then The Globe - read more about the fascinating intersection of UK history and the theatre company here) Fallen Angels opened in April of 1925 after quite a tumultuous journey with the Lord Chamberlain's office of censorship. From 1737 to 1968, the official department of Lord Chamberlain had executive power to veto theater that was deemed too dangerous to the moral well-being of audience members and the general public through a series of legislation enacted in 1737 and 1843. Following the success of Coward’s first widely acclaimed play, The Vortex (1924), in which Coward co-stared, wrote and directed, public interest in the rising playwright’s work exploded. With that new found attention, however, came new interest in the often risqué subject matter of Coward’s works. This jeopardized the premiere of Fallen Angels, a comedy that stars two women with a shared former lover, along with Hay Fever, set to be published in 1925 as well.

In the end, The Lord Chamberlain, then Rowland Baring, 2nd Earl of Cromer, let the play run, with a few alterations to dialogue, reasoning it too farcical to be a real threat. Noël Coward, then only 25 years old, was permitted to go ahead with the production.

Noël Coward went on to be the definitive voice of British theatre in the 20th century, even achieving knighthood for his contributions to the culture in 1970. A complex man, Coward’s legacy of adulterous and satirical works have been the subject of much study, much to the annoyance of the playwright who claimed to write plays simply for “wanking good parts for himself” and friends.