A month after wrapping up her time on the Oscar circuit, Rose Byrne is now appearing nightly on Broadway courtesy of Fallen Angels. The Best Actress nominee for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is headlining the Noël Coward revival alongside Tony-winning Kelli O’Hara and daytime talk show staple Mark Consuelos in his Broadway debut.
Despite the star power involved, critical reactions to the revival of the 1925 farce are mixed. Here’s a sampling of what reviewers are saying.
The good
Writing in Deadline, Greg Evans offers effusive praise for the two stars. “Fallen Angels is a most welcome springtime treat, a smart, breezy entry in Broadway’s chaotically busy pre-Tony season,” he writes. “O’Hara clammers up the set’s Art Deco staircase like an inebriated crab, and Byrne, an exemplary comedian… has the funnybone instinct that allows a gorgeous person to revel in unflattering deshabille.”
The Guardian‘s Juan A. Ramirez agrees, saying: “The two are stars of elastic, compulsively watchable talent, and the unexpectedness of their pairing only serves their dynamic in this expert staging of Coward’s play, as their characters goad each other’s worst impulses on until they come into conflict with their own. Their performances work — brilliantly — in the converse, with Byrne’s knack for bawdiness and O’Hara’s born gentility swirling around to intoxicating effect.”
Meanwhile, Jason Zinoman uses the pages of The New York Times to praise the mercifully brief runtime. “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.”
The meh
The Wrap’s Robert Hofler isn’t falling for these angels, though. “Byrne and O’Hara are a good comic team, but not a great one,” he sniffs. “They haven’t decided whose the alpha comic and who’s the beta, and their twin very high-pitched sopranos are too equally matched, making the first 30 minutes something of a screeching match.”
The New York Post‘s Johnny Oleksinski also isn’t much of a fan, noting: “The alcohol-fueled hilarity and fun aren’t really the result of anything Coward wrote … but because Byrne and O’Hara are largely left to their own insane devices.”
And over in AM New York, Matt Windman says Fallen Angels “has the setup, but not quite the execution,” to be a memorable night at the theater. “Director Scott Ellis … compresses the action into a brisk, intermission-less 90 minutes, pushing the material at such speed that its rhythms collapse entirely. Lines that should land with epigrammatic precision, such as Julia’s distinction between loving one’s husband and being “in love” with him, are rushed past or swallowed. Instead of savoring Coward’s wit, the production hurries to the punchlines, often leaving them blurred or inaudible.”
