Heavenly pairing lifts 'Fallen Angels'

Theatre Memphis favorites pour it on for their fans. Ann Sharp (left) toasts Jude Knight before the spirit of conviviality gives way to their jealousies and dreams as cackling, desperate matrons awaiting a visit from a former mutual lover.

Over the years, Theatre Memphis has promoted its stable of actors in such a way that a handful of them are — in the minds of longtime patrons — stars.

By virtue of the many shows they've been in at the theater, Ann Sharp and Jude Knight have every right to demand their names on a marquee of some kind. Quite likely, more than a few people would show up because of it.

Theatre Memphis favorites pour it on for their fans. Ann Sharp (left) toasts Jude Knight before the spirit of conviviality gives way to their jealousies and dreams as cackling, desperate matrons awaiting a visit from a former mutual lover.

Sharp knows how it feels to soak up the adoration of a dozen chorus boys singing "Hello, Dolly!" And Knight's quirkier brand of imperiousness comes in handy for enchantingly robust roles such as Florence Foster Jenkins in the recent "Souvenir."

Once in a blue moon, however, the theater is able to pair them up in a show, and that quickly becomes a big selling point. A few years ago, "Mame," starring Sharp in the title role and Knight as Vera, established them as the bosom buddies you could bank on.

Now they are together again on the Lohrey Stage in "Fallen Angels," a 1925 comedy written by Noel Coward just before he became an international icon with "Hay Fever."

A prologue in the Samuel French script includes an apt description of the play as "a frothy nothing." Over two hours and three acts, a couple of desperate and dotty matrons from upper-crust London await a visit from a former mutual lover, a Frenchman.

It gives them a "fearful sort of illegitimate thrill," just to say the name Maurice. Their own marriages have long been relegated to "affection and good comradeship."

However, as the evening wears on and the champagne gives way to liqueur, the friends let their jealousies — and fantasies — get the best of them.

"Probably only Coward could take such material and make it into the evening of sheer entertainment he has," concludes the prologue.

As Coward is no longer with us, the play now relies on modern-day performers to get the job done. Under the direction of John Rone, Sharp and Knight may not convey the barbed sophistication of Coward's wit. But they do put on a raging bender worthy of Albee's George and Martha.

Their mirthful cackling and scoffing at each other does have its fans in the audience. The pair have a knack for handling the unexpected, such as when Sharp's earring became attached to her costume and their joint frozen expressions while she freed it showed how their onstage familiarity breeds hilarity.

The other roles in "Fallen Angels" may be smaller, but have been well cast. As Saunders, the maid whose real name no one can remember, Mary Buchignani aims her performance straight into to the audience and gets the laughs for it.

Jason Spitzer and Chris Sterling are spot-on as the golf-playing, clueless husbands who have likely never considered the erstwhile sex lives of their wives.

This production of "Fallen Angels" could have been slightly more urbane, but then it also wouldn't have the same fanciful sense of mirth that audiences now expect when Knight and Sharp take the stage together.

'Fallen Angels'

The play continues at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through Feb. 21 at Theatre Memphis, 630 Perkins Ext. Tickets are $23 adults, $15 students. Call 682-8323.

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