Noel Coward’s comedy, dashed off in three days, and premiered in 1925 when he was 25, is set in the country home of a family of four Bohemians – actress mother, novelist father, their daughter and son – who have, unbeknownst to each other, invited a guest for the weekend. The wit is not so much in the dialogue but in the intolerable rudeness of the hosts and the embarrassment of the visitors. “You’re the most infuriating set of hypocrites I’ve ever seen,” says one of the unfortunate guests. “This house is a complete feather-bed of false emotions – you’re posing, self-centred egoists, and I’m sick to death of you. You haven’t got one sincere or genuine feeling among the lot of you – you’re artificial to the point of lunacy.”
Coward took his inspiration from the visits he paid to the home of American actress Laurette Taylor where they were all forced to play ghastly acrimonious games. He always said it was far and away one of the most difficult plays to perform that he had ever encountered. “To begin with, it has no plot at all and remarkably little action. Its general effectiveness therefore depends upon expert technique from each and every member of the cast.” The revival is not helped by Howard Davies’s disappointing production, the ridiculously huge barn of a set and the miscasting. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, as the gauche, gushing, hearty daughter, comes off best. The comic high spot is a tea-time tableau, the curtain to act one, which has everybody just sitting there awkwardly, desperately wondering what to say next.