This is the third major revival of Coward's celebrated 1924 shocker in six years. But, even if repetition blunts the play's edge, Peter Hall's wily production is worth seeing for its reminder of Coward's historic ambivalence and for Felicity Kendal's high-octane central performance.
Coward was always a finger-wagging moralist in a sophisticate's dressing-gown. You feel a large part of him disapproves of his heroine, Florence Lancaster, who desperately tries to keep age at bay by cavorting promiscuously with young lovers.
As a subscriber to the work ethic, Coward also views with faintly pursed lips the coke-fuelled hysteria of her pianistic son, Nicky.
But, for all his dislike of heedless hedonism, Coward still prefers the volatility of the unstoppable Flo and her druggy son to the self-conscious stiffs with whom they purport to be in love. In that sense, the play anticipates the later comedies which always prove that bohemia and the bourgeoisie make a bad mix.
Kendal's performance also motors this revival very successfully. Showing far more interest in photos of herself than in her returning son or his putative fiancee, her Florence starts as a woman encased in shrill vanity.
But Kendal shows her defences crumbling as she rages intemperately at the hearty young guards officer whom she knows is about to desert her. And she is quite excellent in the final knockdown confrontation with Nicky which Coward shamelessly pinched from Hamlet. Clinging to the bed-rails with white-knuckled fingers and finally accepting that her vaunted "temperament" is no more than a strong sex drive, Kendal conveys the agony of a woman forced to face the naked truth: only in her degradation does Coward's heroine earn his sympathy.
Coward's play, you realise, is ultimately about the dangers of self-deception. And, even if Dan Stevens' Nicky initially seems more down-to-earth than up-in-the-air, he slowly reveals the spiritual flakiness and implicit gayness of this would-be artist.
In a nice touch, Hall also implies that Florence's truth-telling best friend, deftly played by Phoebe Nicholls, is filled with thwarted lesbian passion.
In stark contrast, Barry Stanton as a waspish socialite leaves one in no doubt of his sexual inclinations. He, in fact, seems the most honest character in a play that reminds one, in its portrait of the illusory vanities of the 20s smart set, that Coward was actually a late Victorian at heart.
· Until June 7. Box office: 0870 890 1101
