Whirling in Noël Coward's vortex

The Vortex by Noël Coward

Rose Theatre, Kingston, Friday 15 February (running until Saturday 2 March)

The jazz hands of 1920s glamour open this play; the wringing hands of Florence and her son Nicky, conscious echoes of Gertrude and Hamlet, wring your heart by the end of it. We are thrust from the wit and frisky joie-de-vivre of the first act into a mortal coil of bitter self-discovery and betrayal, which feels as relevant and shocking now as it must have been in 1924. Noël Coward has an uncanny ability (considering he was only 24 when the play premiered) to stick a dagger into the concerns of age and of youth and expose the fears of us all. The Rose Theatre has put on a production that teases out these real psychological anxieties with brilliant panache, embracing the play's hysteria without ever giving way to gratuitous sentimentalism or melodrama.

Stephen Unwin’s accomplished direction produces virtuosic changes of tone that take the audience hurtling through emotions faster than Scott Joplin’s fingers move over a piano in the Maple Leaf Rag. One minute you’re laughing at light-hearted socialite repartee, the next witnessing an unspoken, heart-jolting revelation that prompts you to interrogate exactly what you were laughing at and how you failed to see the tragic cracks just below the artificial surface of rouge and perfume. The wonderfully Art Deco set from Neil Warmington locates us in the decadence of the age, while reminding us that Coward’s concerns are equally modern. An anachronistic Mick Jagger lips sofa and a broken yellow frame surround the stage to suggest a fragmented, undeniably contemporary world.

Within an excellent cast, David Dawson shines particularly – his Nicky, grappling with probable homosexuality and clandestine cocaine addiction, is brilliantly pitched. He never veers into over-emotive frenzy or contemptible self-pity. You can always perceive a basic moral integrity and elusive rationality that lie buried beneath the addled, insecure exterior. The acting throughout is consummate – with a few minor exceptions, all the actors maintain a superlative control of the shades of grey within their roles, however slight their character may be. James Dreyfus deserves a particular mention for his turn as a bitchy dandy who wafts in and out of scenes with ineffable flair.

‘We are all swirling in a vortex of beastliness’: this is how Nicky characterises his whole experience of life. And when he utters it in such anguished desperation, we feel instinctively that this applies to us just as much as to him and his world. Watching this play acts as an intense reminder of just how threatening that vortex is, just how closely it whirls beneath us and how we must remain vigilant against its magnetic pull. And the Rose's production provides this reminder with such finesse that we cannot help but want to absorb ourselves in Coward’s world, however disquieting it may be.

Follow me on twitter @BetweentheReeds