by Noel Coward
Directed by Kate Lynch
At the Royal George Theatre
June 25-October 11, 2009

   Star Chamber was meant to be part of Noel Coward’s ambitious anthology of one-act plays, Tonight At 8.30, but it was performed for only a single matinee performance and was thereafter ignored. Happily for Coward fans and theatre aficionados, this forgotten one-act comedy has been rediscovered by a shrewd director and an excellent cast who make of this light-hearted sketch of competing egos an afternoon delight. Actually, it begins before noon and runs less than an hour, but it is an hour filled to the brim with colourful characters drawn from the world of theatre. They are colourful because they are peculiar or extravagant, and the fun comes out of their irrepressible urges to make a speech, get a laugh, or steal a scene.

   The set-up is this: West End stars and starlets gather on the stage of a musty London theatre because they are committee members of a retirement home for aged actresses (probably such as are seen in Coward’s full-length Waiting In The Wings). It is a diverse group: the home’s secretary is a stage-struck civilian (played with expert awe and bafflement by Guy Bannerman); Julian Breed is a narcissistic matinee idol (interpreted flamboyantly by Evan Buliung); Violet Vibart is a stylish drawler (Sharry Flett in another fine cameo); Xenia Jones is a gushing committee chairwoman (Fiona Byrne all self-conscious posing and declamation); Hester More (Marla McLean) is a Method actress who does not know how to cope with the Method; Johnny Bolton is the genial but chronic anecdotalist (whom Neil Barclay plays with a little too broadly and without real style); and Dame Rose Maitland is, well, Gabrielle Jones as a stuffy old dame who gets frequently indignant. Less colourful but no less important characters are also on hand: a young mother (Jenny L. Wright) who is a proud and passionate proponent of working motherhood, and Jimmy Horlick, the laconic stage manager, whom Peter Krantz plays with perfect pitch and manner. All these types keep interrupting one another and the business at hand, and the comedy has kick to it. Duty compels me to add that Bismarck the Great Dane has his scene-stealing moments that sometimes top the human actors, but everything ends with Julian Breed’s eccentric rendition of the eccentrically satirical Coward song “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” that I would nominate as a perfect number by which to memorialize the British Raj as well as Coward’s talent to amuse.

photo: Emily Cooper

pic: Cast of "Star Chamber"



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