Fallen Angels review: Marvelously matched Rose Byrne, Kelli OHara offer hilarity in rice-paper-thin Broadway revival

One hour and 30 minutes with no intermission.At the Todd Haimes Theatre, 227 W.

42nd Street.There’s not much more to “Fallen Angels,” Noël Coward’s rice-paper-thin 1925 comedy, than two sex-crazed women getting wasted.That brief synopsis alone probably just sent a bunch of you racing to the box office website.But then there are the two marvelously matched actresses playing the Olympian lushes in the revival that opened Sunday at the Todd Haimes Theatre: Oscar nominee Rose Byrne and Tony Award winner Kelli O’Hara.The game pair begin as the picture of Coward ladies, for whom humor is typically delivered from the neck up.But they soon drunkenly devolve into a flailing and maniacal Edina and Patsy from the Brit-com “Absolutely Fabulous,” falling over armchairs and crawling on the carpet of a gorgeous London apartment in silky gowns while pounding Champagne.They drink, they smoke, they scream, they tumble.

They’re wives gone wild.That riot of a second scene of the playlet, one of the “Private Lives” writer’s early, lesser efforts, is delicious and lowers the audience’s shoulders after a very shaky start of oversold jokes and ear-drum-piercing British accents that run the gamut.The alcohol-fueled hilarity and fun aren’t really the result of anything Coward wrote though — there’s only a drizzle of wit to be found here — but because Byrne and O’Hara are largely left to their own insane devices. Of course, every party kicks off with the awkward “How about this weather?”s and ends the next morning with a raging hangover.“Fallen Angels” is much the same — the middle is splendid and then there’s the rest.What has driven these desperate women to the bottle? Byrne plays Jane and O’Hara is Julia, a pair of unhappily married friends whose seven-year itch has them scratching 24/7.

Their husbands Willy (Christopher Fitzgerald) and Fred (Aasif Mandvi) are stiff bores and the domestic drudgery has grown suffocating.Then — bonjour! ...