Times change. In 1936, when Noël Coward was assembling his repertoire package of one-act plays, Star Chamber’s lampooning of stage figures’ charitable activities was considered so indiscreet, its targets so identifiable, that it was withdrawn after a single performance. Even the first “full” UK revival of the package in 2014, performed as Coward intended in three rotating triple-packs, did not restore it. At that time, however, I remarked in review that I found another of the playlets, Fumed Oak, misogynistic. Lo and behold, for the plays’ return to the West End (albeit in the tiny Jermyn Street Theatre), Star Chamber is back in and Fumed Oak is out.

Tom Littler’s juggler-skilled revival also opts for a 3x3 format (though not in Coward’s original combinations), with one trio performed on later weeknights and all three on weekend all-dayers (shortly to be joined on spare evenings by a further group of modern response pieces from female writers). There’s a certain thrill of miniaturisation in this exercise: the changes of Louie Whitemore’s set on the postage-stamp-sized stage are so adroit that, on press day, the stage management team joined the ensemble cast of nine at the final curtain call. Four of the playlets include songs, with Stefan Bednarczyk breaking out of the cast to accompany them on piano. One of the best-known pieces, Red Peppers, portraying a bickering music-hall double act, feels grimier than usual in its “performance” sequences, but this too adds to the spirit of the overall production.

The most famous of all, Still Life, went on to become the film Brief Encounter (Emma Rice’s stage adaptation of which is currently running just round the corner). In Littler’s revival, the pair of accidental lovers are played by Nick Waring and Miranda Foster, the most impressive of the performing nonet. In other packages they can be seen, for instance, as a down-on-their-luck couple of Riviera socialites in the comedic Ways And Means, or as another lover and his betrayed wife in the even more sombre The Astonished Heart. None of this is to belittle their fellows, including Sara Crowe and Rosemary Ashe, all of whom ride the Cowardian merry-go-round with inexhaustible flair. A set of gems in a small black box.

Written for the Financial Times.