Though this 1930 comedy of manners must be one of Noel Coward’s most popular and enduring plays, there’s no doubt that the social conventions creating the plot are so dated that a younger audience probably needs footnotes. In a lovely, neatly turned game of coincidences, divorced couple Elyot and Amanda have both just remarried, but find that on their respective honeymoons with their new spouses the two couples are booked into adjoining suites in a luxurious French hotel. Even if you don’t know the play, it isn’t going to take much ingenuity to guess that the original divorced couple, both characterised by their sharp, brittle sophistication, soon pick up the witty bickering that fuelled their relationship as they are drawn back together. This, of course, also means that we see their initial attachments to their new, dewy-eyed partners Sybil and Victor become increasingly tinged with annoyance and disappointment. You don’t need me to tell you how this is going to work out, but what’s unpredictable is how funny you’re likely to find the convolutions and realisations that fuel the comedy. Tanuja Amarasuriya’s new production, supported by the Royal Theatrical Award Trust, certainly makes Elyot (Chirag Benedict) and Amanda (Pepter Lunkuse) as selfishly unlikeable as Coward shows them to be, but never quite picks up the pace that might at the same time reveal the magnetic attraction of their fizzing, ego-fuelled energy. Shocking revelation of their marital infidelities whilst engaging in a bit of post-marital co-habitation on the run from their new partners once came close to getting the play banned but now scarcely raises an eyebrow. Without this frisson the play has to work a lot harder than it does here to engage its audience with the constant self-dramatising antics of the leads – at some points the delivery of swift one-liners was inappropriately glacial, and the (nowadays more worrying than amusing) references to domestic violence had little impact either way once a knockabout tussle was played more like an exercise in choreography. Best performance came from Ashley Gerlach, as the stuffy, over-punctilious Victor who starts to develop an edge, but otherwise this promising version seemed to be winding down the drama instead of winding up the action.

Gail-Nina Anderson