Present Laughter – Richmond Theatre review

Cast of Present Laughter L to R: Adrian Lukis as Len, the husband; Tracy-Ann Oberman as Geri; Charlotte Randle as Henrietta, Geri’s agent; James Dreyfus as Geri’s secretary Monty; Eva Feiler as Rosina Maule, the wannabe playwright; Jonathan Tafler as Morris, a longterm friend and producer

Photographs Simon Annand

A new take on a well known play

You wonder what a production can bring that’s new to a play like Noël Coward’s Present Laughter. Like Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living and Blithe Spirit, it has been produced thousands of times in the West End and on Broadway, and by professional and amateur companies all round the world.

The answer for Tracy-Ann Oberman was to switch the genders of the key characters; change the location to New York and the date to 1977.

The actress, known to a generation as the woman who killed Dirty Den in EastEnders (she played his wife Chrissie Watts in two stints on the long running soap, from 2004–2005, and 2024–2026), has had a long and varied career in theatre, television and radio, having started out in the Royal Shakespeare Company and worked her way as a jobbing actress through TV staples such as Casualty and The Bill, to the height of TV soap stardom, and performed in some 600 radio plays.

She is also a playwright in her own right and secured permission from the Noël Coward Estate to rework the famous play which Noël Coward originally wrote in 1939 as a vehicle for himself.

Tracy-Ann Oberman; Adrian Lukis

Coward played Garry Essendine in the original 1942 production – a self-obsessed actor going through a midlife crisis, a stage idol beset by women who want to seduce him, stalked by a wannabe playwright who wants to be him, and served by a long-suffering secretary and a stoical wife.

‘The idea of a badly behaved middle-aged actress, conducting herself every bit as outrageously as her male counterparts, immediately intrigued me’, writes Tracey in the programme introduction.

As for the date and the location: ‘I found myself drawn to New York in 1977, at the height of Studio 54. The endless queues outside, the celebrities gliding into those hallowed VIP spaces, where strong, charismatic women were centre stage in a world of glamour, excess and intoxicating sense of belonging to “the in crowd”. Where bad behaviour and egotism was rife across all genders’.

Does it work? Absolutely.

Tracy-Ann Oberman is magnificent in the role of Geri Essendine, a glamorous diva with a fragile ego, given to entertaining a succession of attractive young men who ‘sleep in the spare room’, having ‘lost their apartment key’, or so they say when they stumble out, bleary eyed in boxer shorts and one of her flowery silk dressing gowns mid-morning, as her secretary and production staff go about the business of organising her life.

She is sexy and demanding, coquettish and vain, powerful and commanding, but also vulnerable.

Tracy-Ann Oberman; James Dreyfus

The gender-swaps in the roles of her secretary Monty, played by James Dreyfus with admirable sang froid as a middle-class Englishman who is pained by her behaviour but phased by nothing, and her husband Len, divorced but constantly present as her supporter, played with resigned and dignified patience by Simon Annand, also work perfectly. In 2026 they are utterly believable.

I’m not so sure about the wannabe playwright. I know she’s meant to be tiresome and the play is meant to border on farce, but for me the stereotype blue-stocking (actually long woolly sock-wearing) bore Rosina Maule, (Eva Feiler), was a bit too tiresome, and the idea that she would have been granted repeated access to a star who didn’t want to see her stretched credulity a little too far.

Tracy-Ann Oberman; with toy boy Seb Carrington

The love interest, David Stillington, (Seb Carrington), and Johannes, (Perry Williams), were suitably dramatic and adoring.

The play is very funny, but flagged a bit towards the end of the first act I felt, as I began to wonder where the plot was headed. It picked up in the second act.

The costumes were fabulous. Floaty silk peignoirs, glittery evening dresses, Saturday Night Fever style wide-lapelled suits and stacks. I think Noël Coward would have been pleased with the outcome.

Present Laughter is on at Richmond Theatre until Saturday 26 September.

Tickets: ATG Tickets