TheatreReviewGate theatre, DublinNoël Coward's drawing room play about a 1920s socialite and her decadent son is as riveting and barbed as ever
In this play that became a sensation in 1920s London, Noël Coward wrote the best role for himself. Co-directing its premiere, he took the part of Nicky, a young pianist returning from a spell in the citadel of decadence, Paris, with some dubious new habits.
In his absence, his socialite mother, Florence, has amused herself with the latest in a succession of lovers half her age, while her poisonously catty friends roll their eyes over her vanity and obsession with youth. In shimmering gowns, surrounded by art deco furnishing, they assassinate each other's characters over cocktails. Under Annabelle Comyn's assured direction, their languid repartee is played for barbs rather than laughs. Even before Nicky's entrance, a mood of unease prevails.
Rory Fleck Byrne's Nicky is nervy and intense, introducing a fiancée, Bunty, whom Florence instantly resents. The emotional dependency between mother and son is complicated by Nicky's drug-taking, and Florence's complete self-absorption.
In an intricately staged house-party scene, Nicky, high on cocaine, dances a jagged Charleston in front of his own reflection, while the others circle around him. When Bunty breaks off their engagement, Nicky whips up the gramophone speed, crashing through the shocked group. This is a riveting performance, supported by a strong ensemble, especially Fiona Bell as Florence's best friend and Simon Coury as her demoralised husband.
Susannah Harker is convincingly glamorous as Florence, but the role becomes one-dimensional and in the final act, rejected by her lover, she tips over into voluble melodrama. In this climactic confrontation in her bedroom, with Nicky begging her to renounce her debauched ways while she flings his drugs away, Coward's moralising becomes obtrusive.
Yet in the more subtle earlier scenes, this production excavates emotional layers, portraying Florence's terror of becoming superfluous as she loses her youth and beauty. She has nothing else. One acquaintance is mocked for labouring "under the illusion that she really matters", but all of these characters are battling a sense of futility.
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