Fallen Angels has fallen back to Broadway! Noël Coward’s play, directed by Tony Award-nominee Scott Ellis, stars Golden Globe-winner and Oscar-nominee Rose Byrne as “Jane Banbury” and Tony Award-winner Kelli O’Hara as “Julia Sterroll.” They are joined by Drama Desk Award-winner Tracee Chimo as “Saunders”, Emmy Award-winner Mark Consuelos as “Maurice Duclos” making his Broadway debut, Tony Award-nominee & Drama Desk Award-winner Christopher Fitzgerald as “Willy Banbury”, and Obie Award-winner Aasif Mandvi as “Fred Sterroll.” The cast also includes Tina Benko, Christopher Innvar, Max Gordon Moore and Laura Shoop who round out the cast as the understudies.
The limited engagement will continue through Sunday, June 7, 2026 at the Todd Haimes Theatre.
Noël Coward’s champagne-fresh comedy of bad manners shocked and delighted audiences in its 1925 premiere. Two upper-class wives, their husbands away for the day, share a few toasts to their pre-marital dalliances—with the same man, who just may be en route from France to visit. Old rivalries and past scandals bubble to the surface in this intoxicating romp from one of theatre’s comedy masters.
Let’s see what the critics are saying about the revival…
Matthew Wexler, 1 Minute Critic: Byrne and O’Hara prove themselves brilliant physical comedians, whether sliding down stairs, falling over chairs, or guzzling champagne. When Mark Consuelos finally arrives as the highly anticipated French lover Maurice Duclos, the splash of celebrity feels wholly unnecessary (despite him living up to the women’s description: “Those eyes … those hands … and teeth … and legs!”)
Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: If Noel Coward’s play can be credited as proto-feminist for depicting women with sexual desire that is just as strong as a man’s (certainly stronger than their husbands’), could director Scott Ellis be trying to prove that graceful, beautiful actresses are equal to any male clown in their ability to plotz?
Matt Windman, AM New York: “Fallen Angels” looks handsome and sounds promising on paper, but in execution, it proves curiously insubstantial, a revival with style to spare but little reason to exist.
Melissa Rose Bernardo, New York Stage Review: Even a single drunk scene can grow tiresome quickly, so an entire play built around an extended display of upper-middle-class BFFs behaving badly could easily become extremely irritating. Thankfully, O’Hara and Byrne are so wonderful—and so wonderfully matched—that there’s no getting annoyed with either of them. They can take out the audience with one look, the flick of a cigarette lighter, or the toss of a scarf (Byrne using her napkin as a neckerchief to accessorize Jeff Mahshie’s stunning green dinner dress, a wonderful nod to Keira Knightley’s Atonement gown, is a stroke of genius). And there’s a hysterical bit involving O’Hara, the telephone, an armchair, and a very slow head-first dive that must be seen to be believed.
Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review: Director Scott Ellis tends to rush the pace of the comedy, when taking a bit more leisure about it might make Coward’s already clipped dialogue easier to appreciate. His staging takes surprisingly little advantage of the expansive set and its deluxe furnishings. The program notes that Coward revised the play in 1958 following its revival on Broadway, although this intermission-free version appears to bear other fingerprints as well.
Greg Evans, Deadline: Under the sure direction of Scott Ellis and given a lush, gorgeous staging by Roundabout and some of Broadway’s best designers – David Rockwell, sets, sumptuous; Jeff Mahshie, costumes, deep oppulance; Kenneth Posner, ever-so-flattering lighting – Fallen Angels is a most welcome springtime treat, a smart, breezy entry in Broadway’s chaotically busy pre-Tony season.
Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune: Not since the glory days of Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley in “Absolutely Fabulous” has there been a funnier pair of women playing drunk as one currently finds at the Todd Haimes Theatre on Broadway.
Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Coward is no Beckett. Unlike Godot, there really is a suave Frenchman who wooed Julia and Jane (in Pisa and Venice, respectively) and arrives in the play’s rushed final scene. But when Mark Consuelos turns up as Maurice Duclos, it’s a bit of a letdown — and not just because the daytime TV veteran speaks in a voice that’s barely European much less French. The character is basically a human MacGufffin meant to generate friction among the four primary players in Coward’s romantic farce. The revelation of the heroines’ premarital sex lives — once so shocking that London censors initially banned the play — now seems rather quaint. Still, Ellis and his cast have ginned up enough boozy shenanigans in Fallen Angels that the lingering buzz carries you through the show’s duller and more dated sections.
Charles Isherwood, Wall Street Journal: Broadway has not seen a more delectable diversion this season than the bubbly revival of Noël Coward’s early comedy “Fallen Angels,” starring the glittering duo of Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara. They portray a pair of well-heeled, smashingly well-dressed and vaguely dissatisfied wives hoping (or fearing?) to rekindle the romantic excitements of their youth when a man from their past—a French lothario with whom they both had brief affairs before their marriages—gets in touch many years after their liaisons ended.
Brian Scott Lipton , Cititour: Like the bubbly champagne that’s served onstage, “Fallen Angels” is a perfect pick-me-up. But luckily, the show is a brisk 90 minutes, because as our heroines learn, there’s quite a danger in overindulgence.
Jason Zinoman, New York Times: Most importantly, this 90-minute production (the perfect length for a comedy) has mastered the right pace. It starts fast, then puts on the brakes for the fun of Byrne and O’Hara drinking themselves silly and salty. Patience is afforded when it comes to the serious business of vamping, pratfalls, funny hairdos. Ellis’s staging leans into the frivolity, but its real feat to put on a tight entertainment that somehow has the looseness of a hangout comedy.
Brent Lang, Variety: If only the 90 minutes that preceded that killer capper had more fizz to them. O’Hara and Byrne may be bleeding for every laugh, but you can’t ignore the fact that “Fallen Angels” is one of Coward’s lesser works. The play proves that even in his twenties, he was already perfecting his transgressive wit.
Robert Hofler , The Wrap: Even at the very un-Coward-like length of 90 minutes, this production of “Fallen Angels” under the direction of Scott Ellis takes about half an hour to light any real comic fire in what was once the play’s first act. When it finally does ignite, Rose Byrne’s Jane and Kelli O’Hara’s Julia don’t delight by what they say. Instead, they have to get sh*t-faced drunk.
David Cote, Cote Notices: Scott Ellis’s zippy and graceful staging on David Rockwell’s Art Deco-tastic set goes down easy as box wine, even if the comic fireworks are muted. An all-English cast would nail accents and tone better. Fallen Angels runs but 90 minutes and while you wish for bigger laughs and more assured style, it’ll be over before you feel like sneaking out.
Juan A. Ramirez, The Guardian: O’Hara swishes Coward’s highborn language like a favorite chablis; the actor is an ascendant grande dame of period pieces from television (The Gilded Age) to opera (The Hours) to musical theater (Days of Wine and Roses). What’s surprising is how broadly she can go at physical comedy, falling over furniture and going full Mommie Dearest the morning after. As always, she’s excellent. It is similarly never wise to bet against Byrne. In her second Broadway outing, she takes a bit longer to settle into her character. But as she’s displayed throughout her career, right up to her first Oscar nomination this year in the psychodrama If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, she is a constantly surprising actor. She truly shines once her Jane is nice and toasted, sneaking sips from Julia’s glass and managing to proclaim “how dare you!” in a haughty, one-syllable hiss.
Sara Holdren, Vulture: Well-written, well-acted, escalating fizz can wind up facing a challenge: What happens when it’s time to finish off the bottle and head home? In its dénouement, Fallen Angels doesn’t reach the sublime heights of, say, The Importance of Being Earnest — even Coward couldn’t quite figure out how to keep a promise as talked-up as Maurice Duclos without an anticlimax. Ellis doesn’t solve the riddle, either. Under his direction, the show’s delicious froth flattens in its final scenes.
Average Rating:
76.3%
.
