Present Laughter

“I will not play a light French comedy to an auditorium that looks like a Gothic edition of Wembley Stadium,” protests actor Garry Essendine when his producer and manager suggest his next stage project.

Noel Coward’s comedy of outsize theatrical egos, Present Laughter, premiered on Broadway in 1946, a block away from where it is being revived. But you end up wishing that Kevin Kline, returning to the Broadway stage for the first time in a decade, had similarly protested.

The 1,700 seater, three-tier St James Theatre is usually a musical house, and putting a play on here requires it be amplified to the extent that the voices sound strangely disembodied. The actors, many of whom are under strain already to produce an English accent, also over-pitch their performances to try to reach the back row.

The result is that laughter is only intermittently present. It feels lugubrious and weighty rather effortless. Our taste for the kind of theatrical vanity encapsulated by Essendine has long waned and it seems incongruous that his theatre career could support such a large permanent staff, including housekeeper, valet and secretary, or allow his house to look like Victoria station, with so many people coming and going.

Designer David Zinn provides a handsome drawing room set, but Kline apart, it mostly dwarfs the actors who have to shout across its vast acreage.

Kline alone is big enough to fill it, though the women that populate his life are portrayed with varying degrees of sympathy, resignation and outrage. Broadway veteran Kate Burton plays Essendine’s estranged wife with mature assurance, while Kristine Nielsen, as the world-weary secretary, is a scene-stealing delight.