THE fact that Noel Coward wrote this play as the late 1930s stumbled into war is perhaps a major reason why for the first time his characters have the added realism of actually working for a living.

Yes, here we have real people for a change. True, they’re showbiz glamour types, but at least they do something other than sipping gin slings, planning the next French Riviera jaunt, and entertaining friends with silly names such as ‘Binkie’.

Samuel West plays the part of actor Garry Essendine, a man facing what we would now term as a midlife crisis. The proud owner of a closet crammed with skeletons, he becomes alarmed when a gaggle of former conquests descend on his chintzy pad and some unpalatable truths come crashing home.

This then is the theme of the evening and West performs brilliantly, his character’s pompous self-justification becoming ever more frayed at the edges as the women and their various associates lay siege to his gradually crumbling walls.

Liz Essendine (Rebecca Johnson) is the first to undermine his defences, quickly followed by the gloriously snooty Joanna Lyppiatt (Zoe Boyle) who first batters him into submission and then surprises everyone by declaring her love. Well, this is Noel Coward, remember.

All the same, it’s hard to see how the vacuous and terminal admirer Daphne Stillington (Daisy Boulton) could ever possibly fancy the self-obsessed Essendine, but every Coward play needs at least one silly young ‘gel’ and she’s the one on this occasion.

Meanwhile, Fred the gentleman’s gentleman (Martin Hancock) does a fine job flitting around the assembled assassins like a dragonfly quartering a summer pond, somehow remaining immune to all the shenanigans and shouting.

Nevertheless, the glue that holds the whole frivolous thing together is the presence of the redoubtable Phyllis Logan as Essendine’s secretary Monica Reed, the only woman who can make any sense of her employer’s chaotic life.

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