Relative Values, the first play of Noel Coward’s written in the nineteen fifties, is a brilliant comedy of manners, full of snobbery and acidic wit. Though his wife-to-be still harbours feelings for fellow actor Don Lucas (Arthur Kendrick), Nigel, Earl of Marshwood (Will Chappell) is about to marry a Hollywood star, Miranda Frayle (Charlotte Hamblin). But Frayle is the younger sister of Mrs Moxton, known as ‘Moxie’ (Jennie King), the long-time lady’s maid of Nigel’s mother, Countess Felicity Marshwood (Claudia Blunt). Thus it must be pretended upon Miranda’s arrival that Moxie is Felicity’s equal, a “companion-secretary”, instead of a servant. Very much of its time – and the script, in fact, often feels as if it should be set even earlier than the early 1950s, its own contemporary era – this production nonetheless attempts to, as the programme puts it, “[highlight] the relevance it possesses today”. An early line of Crestwell’s (the butler of the house, played by Stephen Bermingham) delivered rather archly – “You don’t have to be conservative to vote Conservative” – is one of the the most successful and most specifically zeitgeist implementations of this intended tone.

This being the freshers’ mainshow, there’s opportunity to check out who’s likely to be consistently gracing the stage over the next three years or so. The annual show generally yields no shortage of talent, and Relative Values is no exception. The cast (numbering ten in total) were strong. Bermingham inhabited the role of Crestwell, absolutely finding all of the mannerisms and humour of the role; Hamblin was good at exhibiting her character’s melodrama; Kendrick immediately conveyed the offensiveness of his American over-familiarity in a great scene alongside Bermingham; Blunt’s crisp and biting Matriarch was a joy to watch.

Denys Robinson, secretary of the Noël Coward Society (due to discuss this play in a pre-show talk on Friday), told me in the interval that he would have expected Nigel to have been played “more ‘rugby player’, more butch”. In this production, he is instead portrayed as petulant and childish. It works well, especially in contrast to the charming and strapping Don, and his unattractiveness makes Miranda’s return to Don much more believable – important when played to an audience no longer wishing for a return to the status quo of marriages within one’s own class for the sole reason of the system’s own self-perpetuation. Perhaps Nigel walking onstage in the second act wearing jodhpurs and a riding hat did something to re-assert his masculinity.

The accents required in this play range from conservative RP to Cockney, and the quality of the accents extremely mixed. The American accents were surprisingly good, as was Blunt’s efforts. King as Moxie was far better at putting on a bad-on-purpose RP accent and pretending to be socially superior than playing her character’s true self. There was a greater than usual number of mangled lines and minor slip-ups from several actors throughout, but hopefully these will disappear in later performances.

The crew must also be congratulated: the set design and the costume design were very good, and blocking was successful (though not innovative). This production was successful in keeping this play fresh – no mean feat. Nor did it suck the humour out of this comedy; it even regularly accentuated it. Some mistakes and mixed abilities of the performers do not excessively detract from an immensely enjoyable performance.