Absent husbands, a former lover and an endless quantity of champagne is a recipe for both disaster and laughs in Noel Coward’s comedy Fallen Angels.

It has been 10 years since the cork-popping chuckle fest was performed in the West End, but has been revived this year for an autumn tour, which heads to the Rose Theatre in January for a week-long run.

Starring Jenny Seagrove and Sara Crowe, the riotous farce tells the story of Julia and Jane, two friends bored of their passionless husbands, who are surprised by an unexpected visit from an ex mutual love interest while their spouses are away playing golf.

They decide the best way to resolve their dilemma is to drink copious amounts of champagne – a risky course of action which inevitably leads to unsettled scores, forgotten feuds and long-kept secrets coming out into the open.

Surrey Comet:

Champagne-quaffing friends Julia and Jane are in a predicament in Fallen Angels

The show will officially kick off the theatre’s new 2014 season– the first since the departure of artistic director Stephen Unwin.

Rose Theatre chief executive Robert O’Dowd said: “We are excited to have a Noël Coward to open the 2014 season and it is great to begin our new way of programming with a classic comedy.”

Both Seagrove and Crowe are consumate television and theatre performers with a string of appearances in hit productions to their name.

Surrey Comet:

Jenny Seagrove and Sara Crowe

Seagrove is perhaps best known to today’s television viewers as barrister Jo Mills in the popular Judge John Deed series, having first come to public attention in BAFTA-winning 1983 movie Local Hero.

Although Crowe spent years as the face of cream cheese brand Philadelphia, she is also an Olivier Award-nominated theatre actress, whose performances in other Coward plays such as Hay Fever and Private Lives have been critically acclaimed.

Directed by Roy Marsden, Fallen Angels promises to get the Rose’s new year off to a sparkling start.

Fallen Angels, Rose Theatre, High Street, Kingston Monday, January 27 to Saturday, February 1 Tickets £19 - £28 (pit cushions £5) Visit rosetheatrekingston.org or call 08444 82 1 556