About the Play:

Fallen Angels has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Female Scenes and Female/Male Scenes.

Fallen Angels is a full-length comedy by Noel Coward. Best friends now happily married in respectable but dull marriages, reunite with the charming, handsome Frenchman with whom each had their last fling before meeting their husbands. Will their marriages and their friendship survive in this Noel Coward farce?

Fallen Angels is a delightful comedy about Roaring Twenties Desperate Housewives featuring tour-de-force roles for two leading ladies and its maid character. Julia and Fred and Willy and Jane are happily married and the best of friends, until a postcard arrives with news of the imminent arrival of a certain handsome Frenchman. While their husbands are away for a day of golf, guess who's back in town and requesting the pleasure of the ladies' company? Julia and Jane both had their last fling before marriage with the dashing, debonair, and utterly sophisticated Frenchman Maurice. Add to this mix too much champagne and the maid who seems to know absolutely everything about everything and certainly far more about golf balls and hangover remedies than Jane and Julia. As each successive glass of liquid courage is imbibed, tongues start to loosen, hidden jealousies surface, the claws come out, and all attempts at demure behaviour go out the window. But it's not until the unexpected early return of their golfing husbands that the women's evening really hits its frenzied peak. A thousand sit-com writers owe Noel Coward a real debt here. Fallen Angels is a champagne cocktail of wit, charm and high comedy that set the stage for the likes of female comedic duos such as Lucy and Ethel and LaVerne and Shirley. The sophisticated "bubbles" are popped throughout by sharp and wickedly-funny barbs about the perils of marital bliss.

Fallen Angels premiered in 1925 at the Globe Theatre (now called the Gielgud Theatre) in London. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 3 male

What people say:

"...have a cocktail and dish the dirt with Fallen Angels... Given the play's fascination with female pleasure, it's hard to believe this delicious 1925 romp hasn't been revived more often. Startlingly modern, the play makes the hedonism in 'Fifty Shades of Grey' seem so, well, earnest." — Los Angeles Times

"Fallen Angels ... sparkles... The champagne-bubbly, dryly witty romp about the foibles of the British upper class also deals with such universal themes as the lure of lustful sex, marriages gone stale, the nature of commitment, and the sexual double standard, so the story remains relevant." — Backstage

"Deliciously tart… pure, lighthearted escapism." — San Jose Mercury News

"Witty and often barbed interchanges… [with] funny lines and zingers aplenty from Coward." — DC Theater Arts

"Heavenly… a sublimely entertaining evening at the theatre." — Broadway World

"[A] giddy comedy of manners… Lurking beneath Coward's commentary on marriage is a wry aside on the class system." — The New York Times

"A fine piece of Coward writing: witty, trenchant, superficially frothy but actually questioning the empty lives led by these indolent privileged people." — The Observer

About the Playwright:

Sir Noël Coward (1899-1973) was one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th Century. Also a composer, director, actor and singer, he first made his name as a playwright with The Vortex, in which he also appeared. His numerous other successful plays included Fallen Angels, Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, and Blithe Spirit. He was knighted in 1970.