Review: HOME CHAT, Finborough Theatre, 1 September 2016

Time to dig out the cloche hats and full-length kick-pleat skirts because, almost 90 years after its premiere and without even a Wikipedia entry so obscure was it, Noel Coward's Home Chat is revived at the Finborough Theatre. And what an odd, though highly satisfying, production it is.

We're with the English upper-middle-class caught in a scandal in the days when who was sleeping with whom was treated as both a intensely private matter and something endlessly talked about behind the chintz curtains over afternoon tea - yes, hypocrisy ruled.

For once, and to the exquisite horror of everyone, the evidence is (apparently) irrefutable, after old friends Janet Ebony and Paul Chelsworth had climbed out of the only sleeping compartment to have survived a train crash en route from Paris to Calais. Not quite caught in flagrante delicto, but plenty enough for friends and family to condemn them in the court of public morals.

But Janet and Peter claim that it was a convenient and not a sexual arrangement - the sort of thing old friends do to help each other out on an overbooked sleeper. When they get the "That's a likely story" treatment, they decide to play along with the scandal, feigning an affair as both feel that they have little to lose and might enjoy sorting out those who do trust them from those who do not.

That's the cue for lots of witty banter, lots of harrumphing in high dudgeon and, from the perspective of 2016, if not perhaps 1927, a happy ending, as the right people eventually pair off like it's A Midsummer Night's Dream. But oh for a Puck to bring them together, rather than the lovers having to rely on their own navigation through the thickets of an ancien regime's mores.

There are splendid performances from a highly skilled cast who speak their lines with a clarity that one seldom finds in any theatre, an oft-neglected component of what makes a fringe production successful.

As the not-quite-lovers, Richard Dempsey is mischievous, doing what he can with an underwritten part, but Zoe Waites is all bold, devil-may-care protofeminist, determined to live her life as a sexual woman and not an ornament on the arm of dull a novelist (Tim Chipping red of face and weak as water). Coward was much more interested in her than him, perhaps recognising an opportunity to outrage the public with so brazen a woman. They get excellent support, with Robert Hazle the standout as a butler with a thing for the house mistress and a penchant for Noel Coward's songs.

The show is stolen by the not-quite-lovers' mothers, who have the menace of the aunts of PG Wodehouse and the chutzpah that comes with what's now called white privilege. Joanna David and Polly Adams draw on years of experience to maximise the outrage while treading very close to caricature - and the ticket price is repaid with the first arched eyebrow!

If the play shows its age with a slightly pedestrian first act (unlike the doomed train, it could do with speeding up) Charlotte Espiner's costumes and Rebecca Brower's set are both packed with detail to pick out during the longeurs, the Finborough again delivering high production values in an intimate setting. Indeed, it's hard to imagine how the play - slightly dated though its pace may be - could be delivered better. It's languidly easy on eye and ear, and who could tire of The Master's repartee?

Home Chat continues at the Finborough Theatre until 24 September

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