by AMY BARRATT

The 1940s and ’50s are just so happening right now. No, I do realize they happened decades ago, but my recent theatregoing has put me into a time warp.

It’s the home front during wartime at the D.B. Clarke, where Theatre Panache is presenting Till We Meet Again, a musical modelled after a live CBC radio show from the ’40s. Meanwhile, at the Segal, Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels, written in the ’20s, has been transposed to the ’50s, which is the last decade in which it could be performed without appearing totally anachronistic.

In this witty if somewhat plot-challenged early work by the foremost wit of his generation, two upperclass British women, Julia and Jane, discover that Maurice, a Frenchman with whom each had an affair before she wed, is coming to London. The mature women, both happily married but admittedly no longer in the throes of passion for their husbands, go all schoolgirlish at the prospect of seeing Maurice again.

The play is primarily a vehicle for two women, and for that, generations of actresses have been grateful to Coward. Doing the master proud in this production are two Shaw Festival regulars, Brigitte Robinson and the radiant Goldie Semple. Honestly, it’s a bit mean to ask anyone to share a stage with this woman, but Robinson manages to get some of the biggest laughs of the evening with her Lucille Ball-type slapstick.

Only Coward would think of providing comic relief in a comedy. Here it is provided by Clare Coulter as the humourless, know-it-all maid, Saunders. The husbands appear at the beginning, then spend most of the play off golfing. The French lover (Paul-Antoine Taillefer) makes a belated appearance in the third and final act.

Any lingering whiff of the scandal that this play caused when it opened in 1925 is blown away by Leblanc’s casting of Jane and Julia as fabulously over-40. They have both been married around five years—Maurice was seven years ago. I should be surprised if they hadn’t sown a few wild oats even before him.

Wartime tribute

Maybe because it was the afternoon and the audience was small, but the preview performance I saw of Till We Meet Again moved at a snail’s pace. The singing is fine and the songs, from “This Is the Army Mr. Jones” to “I’ll Be Seeing You,” are fantastic.

The format of the radio show is followed too religiously. We see three broadcasts: from 1940, ’42 and ’44. Costumer Karen Pierce does a wonderful job of showing the evolution of the characters and the fortunes of the show through what they wear, and that’s good because the script gives us almost nothing. The characters are more archetypes than individuals. Even the poignant moments—and there are several—seem more generic than specific.

The two youngest members of the ensemble, Amanda LeBlanc and Adrian Marchuk, have lovely voices—we keep waiting for the script to whip up a romance for them, but it never does. Kathleen McAuliffe is a wonder as always, whether playing a hard-nosed lady reporter in a magnificent hat, singing a ballad or a Gracie Fields-style comic song.

This is a show tailor-made for the men who fought in WWII and the women who kept the home fires burning. It saddens me that so few of them are left to enjoy this tribute to their courage and strength.

FALLEN ANGELS, TO NOV. 12 AT THE SEGAL (5170 CÔTE-STE-CATHERINE), 739-7944 TILL WE MEET AGAIN TO NOV. 12 AT THE D. B. CLARKE (1455 DE MAISONNEUVE W.), 231-5084

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