(seen at the performance on 1st February 2026)
This is early Coward, and unfamiliar to the monkey. It wishes it had discovered it sooner. Christopher Luscombe’s scrupulously period production shows it to best advantage, Simon Higlett producing a 1925 Art Deco sitting room (airily lit by Oliver Fenwick) the monkey would move into tomorrow.
It is farce at Noel Coward stately British pace. Two married ladies wake with premonitions that become anticipatory nightmares. Their pre-marriage French lover Maurice Duclos (Graham Vick) brings back memories of encounters in Pisa and Venice. Now, Duclos is in London and wants to visit.
The husbands are off golfing where only irons are required, the ladies bolt, return and have a panickingly squiffy evening together. It all descends into mistaken identities, miscommunicated motives and a trademark Coward finish.
Janie Dee is a stately and anarchic Julia Steroll. Holding her alcohol as she holds her marriage – unsteadily steady – her timing is immaculate, her petty conspiracies and wider grasp, but not grip, on realities often hilarious.
Husband Fred (Richard Teverson) may be married to her, and believe he is in control of his marriage, but we are unsure. As time goes on, so is he. Teverson’s change from everyday routine to shocked incomprehension is sound work.
Julia’s intimate friendship with Jane Banbury (Alexandra Gilbreath) is the key to the whole piece – Noel Coward always praised for giving the opportunity (rare at the time) for two women to shine in a central scene.
Even if not passing the Bechdel test, it gives Gilbreath the chance to demonstrate outstanding technical work with some outrageous inebriation and even more outrageous schemes to save herself… or not, as it turns out. Bayswater isn’t really a solution.
Husband Bill (Christopher Hollis) is brighter than friend Fred, aware that things are awry but unable to pin down a cause. His act three calculations are unfailingly amusing.
Just as Patsy Ferran did during Angela Lansbury’s “Blithe Spirit,” Sarah Twomey as maid Saunders almost steals the show with snappily unexpected talent reveals including an unforgettable solo sequence.
Likewise, Graham Vick appears only in the third act, but manages the usual French trick of making inhibited English men look not only foolish but entirely unsophisticated in the ways of their own relationships.
The whole may appear less scandalous now to the modern eye, but this lovingly conceived production shows us what entertained, and precisely why it shocked, audiences back then.
From those famous cloche hats to stylish flapper dresses, Fotini Dimou’s costumes enhance things further, with Betty Marini producing the hairstyle wigs to go with it, and Nigel Hess exactly the right music – B flat included, that Adam Cork’s sound design elevates perfectly.
Never short of surprises or a witty line, a precursor of the famous plays to come, this is more than a museum exhibit, confirming that both Coward and the Menier have, “a talent to amuse.”
4 stars.