Content area
Full Text
ABROAD
SEMI-MONDE
(LYRIC THEATER; 975 SEATS; L32.50 ($48) TOP)
LONDON A Thelma Holt, Karl Sydow and Bill Kenwright presentation of a play in three acts by Noel Coward. Directed by Philip Prowse. Sets and costumes, Prowse; lighting, Gerry Jenkinson. Opened, reviewed March 21, 2001. Running time: 2 HOURS, 5 MIN.
Tanis Marshall - Sophie Ward
Dorothy Price - Nichola McAuliffe
Suzanne Fellini - Georgina Hale
Beryl Fletcher - Camilla Power
Beverley Ford - Ian Price
Cyril Hardacre - Benedick Bates
Inez Zulieta - Frances Tomelty
Cynthia Gable - Freya Dominic
Marion Fawcett - Imogen Claire
Julius Levenovitch Stefan Bednarczyk
Jerome Kennedy - John Carlisle
Norma Kennedy - Beth Cordingly
Harry Leftwich - Brendan Hooper
Owen Marshall -Simon Dutton
With: David Foxxe, Dom Wilson, Lucy Russell, Niall Faber, Andrew Joseph, Stephen Scott, Carsten Hayes, Paul Albertson, Andrea Hart, Patti Clare, Peter Hampson, Derwent Watson, Tristram Wymark, Ellen Sheean.
Well into the third act of the disconcerting non-event that is "Semi-Monde," the 1926 Noel Coward play only now receiving its London premiere, an aspish senior novelist named Jerome Kennedy (John Carlisle) punctures - however briefly the low-camp banter that until then has been driving the play. "Nothing lasts - ever," he says in a declaration so direct that it has the force of revelation. Continuing on, he offers a critique of "the usual practice of codes and pretenses" animating a culture built, he says, on lies. The remarks carry a real, if short-lived, sting, and then it's back to the badinage, which seems to be how these black-clad cocktail-hour revelers at the Ritz in Paris...