Mauckingbird Theatre Company presents Noël Coward’s ‘Fallen Angels’

Unfortunately, director Peter Reynolds fits his production with an awkward social commentary that neither the text nor his direction supports. In pre-curtain remarks on opening night, Reynolds described that play as “a story of love and marriage regardless of gender.” In keeping, the central characters — a pair of respectable society wives still pining for a shared former lover — have been cast with male-identifying actors.

Nothing else has been altered. Julia Sterroll (Liam Mulshine) and Jane Banbury (Chase Byrd) use feminine pronouns, and their husbands — the bland Fred (the bland James Kern) and the excitable Willy (Nate Golden, who tends to shout his lines) — refer to their spouses as “wives.” Yet the production makes no attempt to feminize the characters’ appearance. Mulshine and Byrd cut dashing figures in Jeff Sturdivant’s costumes, a series of well-tailored day suits and dinner wear. Their interactions betray a masculine manner.

Undercutting Coward

Mauckingbird has long employed genderfluid casting, sometimes with successful results. Here, the gesture robs the piece of its subtle subversion. Coward, like Oscar Wilde before him, was a queer artist operating within the confines of a less-than-welcoming society. He imbued his outwardly straight characters with codified idiosyncrasies that needed little explanation to be understood. He also addressed taboo topics, like adultery and unapologetic female sexuality, that stood in for homosexuality. Playing the subtext on the surface denies the audience the delicious irony of Coward’s writing.

Coward’s views on marriage sometimes seem confounding, which adds further confusion to Reynolds’s concept. Julia and Jane both acknowledge that their marriages have evolved from passion to comfortable companionship; their previous dalliances, in contrast, represent desire in its pure form. Same-sex marriage has firmly moved from unthinkable prospect to novelty to commonplace occurrence. If Reynolds wishes to comment on the banality of queer domesticity, it’s a point the production fails to make — largely because Coward only has a shallow interest in the philosophical nature of his characters’ marital bonds. The question of lust versus love is dropped for large stretches, to be reintroduced only when convenient.

The triumphant help

Byrd and Mulshine too often descend into bald campiness, whirling loose-limbed about Andrew Laine’s well-appointed set. This general sense of overstatement — along with veddy overexaggerated English accents — causes them to miss the dry humor in many of Coward’s funniest lines. Both actors grow broader as the play’s 80 intermissionless minutes wear on, occasionally toeing the line of grotesque.

Out of the muddle, one completely successful performance emerges: Jenna Pinchbeck dominates the evening as Saunders, the Sterrolls’ know-it-all maid. (Domestic help often walk away with drawing-room comedies.) Pinchbeck has perfected the art of listening; as she performs her servantly duties, she makes her presence known without demanding too much attention. She also happens to be the only actor who plays her character as written.

Perhaps that’s a lesson in trusting the material.