THREE AND A HALF STARS

Semi-Monde is a dark horse in the stable of Noël Coward plays. Written in 1926, the play wasn’t performed at all until 1977, and didn’t reach the West End until 2001. One reason for this neglect isn’t hard to find – many of its 28 characters are gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Had Coward attempted to stage the play in the 1920s, it would surely have been banned. So 90 years later, when attitudes to sexual preferences are so very different, Semi-Monde is a fascinating choice for Oxford University student companies Labyrinth and Cabal Productions.

The play is set in the grandiose art deco foyer of the Ritz Hotel in Paris – expertly evoked by Alejandra Albuerne’s set design. Beautiful people waft in and out, the girls inevitably wearing fur coats, or at least fur stoles. Maybe they pause to drink a cocktail (or three), exchange waspish remarks, or arrange to meet for lunch – very important this, for arriving late for a lunch date is plainly regarded as a mortal sin.

One or two people stick out. There is a touchy-feely trio of gay men – although, interestingly, one of them ends up happily married. “Oh you do blush so beautifully,” says one gay to another. There’s particularly waspish Inez (Clare Pleydell-Bouverie), a promiscuous lesbian: all charm one minute and bitchy barbs the next, she’s upper class and spoilt, and obviously used to having her own way at all times. And then there’s recently married Cyril (Howard Coase, in a sympathetic performance), who is plainly out of his depth in this snooty maelstrom of shallow, self-interested characters.

But especially in the first half, you really don’t get to know anyone very well, or indeed get introduced to people by name. It’s as if Coward is sitting unnoticed in the Ritz foyer gathering material which he will use to create the great, lasting characters who populate his later plays. Director Carla Kingham describes Semi-Monde as: “a structurally unsound play…but I saw it as a challenge”. She’s met that challenge head on, and has done a magnificent job in achieving such a uniform feeling for the period style of the play right across her large cast. Every actor makes the most of the material available to them. My one gripe with the production is the decision to open a real, operating bar onstage during the interval. This means that audience members enjoying their drinks block the view of the splendidly choreographed flapper dancing in progress upstage.

“We’re all animals covering our desires with a veneer of decency,” remarks aging novelist Jerome (Miles Lawrence) as he downs yet another cocktail towards the end of the evening. Could this be Coward himself, making quite sure that we’ve understood the point of this play?

 

Until Saturday

Box office: 01865 305305, oxfordplayhouse.com