It can be disquieting to confront blind spots in your queer lexicon. I do believe and admit that this was my first time taking in a play by Noël Coward. Coward is a legend, an icon. He belongs in the same Hall of Fame as queens like Oscar Wilde or Cole Porter or Lenny Bernstein. Coward was an ambitious playwright and Fallen Angels is among his most-loved and performed — up there, probably, with Private Lives and Hay Fever. And Mauckingbird Theatre Company’s finally treated a Coward play to the queer lens it so deserves and befits.
In a press release from MTC, artistic director and the director of this production at the Drake Theater, says “we have always wanted to produce a Noël Coward piece at Mauckingbird and are thrilled to tell this story, first presented in 1925, which still has much to say about the nature of marriage,” writes Peter Reynolds. “Of course, Mr. Coward says it all with his signature wit, sophistication and humor.” True to the Mauckingbird way, this is a classically-produced play that involves two married couples — two men married to two women — but the twist is that the foursome are cast as two same-sex-married couples. It’s a lot of fun and Liam Mulshine, as Julia, and Chase Byrd, as Jane, are two extremely sassy actors whose joy with their roles is contagious. All the while, Jenna Pinchbeck flits around as a maid and nearly steals the show as a nosy, passive-aggressive, and curious and chatty Cathy.
The premise is so extra and I love it. To start, in the very beginning of the first act, we meet the Sterrolls — Mulshine is extraordinary as Julia, married to a quite dry and stiff Fred for about five years, and deeply aware of the realities of married life. Especially the part about how one can love someone and not be in love with them, and that one stays in a marriage that can often be regarded as passionless or sexless. Julie straight-up tosses this at her husband and he is aghast, as any upper-class stiff-lipped British man in the 1920s would be. Fred is also disappointed to hear that she has, in fact, discussed this notion at length with her friend and confidant, Jane Banbury, who is also in a cold, affection-draughted marriage of similar length. Julia and Jane dither on, all day and night, about their husbands, Fred and Willy, who golf and drink beers at the pub and are generally rich. Then, one day, Julia and Jane hear from an old mutual flame, Maurice Duclos, a lascivious Frenchman, who is in the London vicinity and plans to call on them imminently. The girls are shook and about to fight.
All of the tension and release thereof builds from here: the boys go off to golf; the girls drink and drink and eat and drink while they wait to hear from Maurice; they have a drunk fight; false alarms take place; and inevitably the husbands return and find their wives hungover, hysterical, and ready to tell on their girlfriend for perceiving the other of going and sleeping with Maurice. Maurice, played by Mitchell Bloom, arrives in the third act with much anticipation and does not disappoint. He hunh hunnnhs and purrs French-accented English and flips the back of his topcoat around and everyone is in his palm, character and audience alike. It’s great fun — waiting for Maurice to arrive is a palpable desire for the audience, we can’t wait to get a look at him and see how the girls will react to his sexual energies. That’s one of the funniest bits to be mined in Fallen Angels, the thrill of sex outside of marriage and the reminiscent power of past loves.
That’s the biggest takeaway for me, and Mauckingbird achieves with this production. Reynolds rightfully introduces Liam as Julia and Chase as Jane in the very beginning as a sort of curtain speech, explaining the use of she/her pronouns, and also comments on how Coward would’ve thought about gay marriage, nearly 100 years after his play was first published. In other words, Coward was closeted essentially throughout his whole career but it was an open secret. Would he even have wanted to marry any one of his shortlist of lovers? Would he be amused or aghast at two men getting married, with a ceremony and cake and best men and all of it? Even, what comedy would he have mined in watching gay men have open marriages, summering in Fire Island, and starring on reality shows?
Of course, we know that queer marriages are no different from heterosexual marriages — to quote our Mayor, Jim Kenney, “marriages come in all shapes and sizes, colors and conditions.” Marriages have understandings, arrangements, and rules, marriages have ups, downs and plateaus, marriages have stumbling blocks, take great strides, and hit certain stretches. I’m 100% certain that there are gay marriages and Janes and Julias in every state of the U.S., gay marriages where one partner has lost the prize of “‘til death do us part” in the fog of “for better or worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” Or perhaps Mauckingbird also takes delight in skewering the idea that gay men are sex maniacs who are only content fucking their husband non-stop forever and always, that gay men also lose the urge, just like straight men and women do every time they turn down the urges of their spouse with the time-tested “I’m not in the mood tonight.”
Aside from the moral and humoristic takeaways in the script, the actors are truly incredible, with rapid-fire banter that reaches a fevered rhythm that hooks the audience in from the first scene. Mulshine and Byrd, embodying society women and doing so with delicious accents that never crack, are magnetic. They nail things like a loose wrist clenched in a light fist at the shoulder. They take delight in a splayed garment, a dramatic stride across the room, an over-the-top perch on a chaise, a deeply felt hair flip. There’s a part in the play where a character describes her days as “aggressively English” and there is definitely some of that here. This is super-white, rich, society drama, with a super-gay flourish — it’s aggressively queer and I’m here for it.
Mauckingbird Theatre Company is performing "Fallen Angels" through January 27th, at 2:00, 7:00, and 8:00PM at the Louis Bluver Theater at the Drake in Center City. Get tickets now!