If anyone last fall had made predictions about what would provide the upcoming Broadway season with its biggest guffaws, the answers might have focused on a waterlogged Celine Dion, or maybe time-warped aliens in fishnets or even an enchanted land where hapless visitors are relentlessly subjected to chipper Golden Age musicals. A dry – as in martini, not stale bread – hundred-year-old Noël Coward play? Probably not.

Well, surprise.

Starring Rose Byrne, who had most recently shifted from her comedy background to deliver a devastating, Oscar-nominated portrayal of a bone-tired mother driven to extremes by the responsibilities of caring for a sick child (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You) and Kelli O’Hara, the beloved star of stage musicals whose most recent Broadway triumph was as the alcoholic wife and mother who loses everything to her addiction, Fallen Angels is, to state it plainly, funny. Hilarious funny. Pause-for-audience-laughter funny.

Directed by Scott Ellis (Art, Tootsie, Take Me Out, among many others), Fallen Angels is set in the impossibly chic and elegant penthouse world of high society, between-wars London, a rarified universe where the evening gowns and smoking jackets are as on-point as the sophisticated banter and dangerously long cigarette holders.

Byrne and O’Hara play lifelong best friends Jane and Julia, respectively, whose lives have become as settled as they are affluent. With their boring husbands away for a day of golf, Julia and Jane are expecting a visitor from their past: A handsome rogue they’ve shared in more ways than one and whose impending drop-by has the ladies’ old rivalries bubbling like so much champagne. Pledges of a united front fade as the booze flows and the barbs get sharper and sharper. (Spoiler alert: The man from the past eventually arrives – he’s played in a brief scene by Broadway newcomer and daytime host Mark Consuelos – and, in this telling anyway – he sets the chandelier rocking with both women, smug husbands nearby notwithstanding.)

In this gorgeously designed Roundabout Theatre Company production (sets by David Rockwell, costumes by Jeff Mahshie), Fallen Angels bridges the gap between arched-eyebrow Cowardian evening jacket repartee and the gutbucket laughs of Byrne’s breakout success Bridesmaids.

And in this conversation with Deadline, Byrne and O’Hara discuss comedic influences, reveal a stage trick or two, and what they learn from Broadway audiences night after night.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

DEADLINE: How long have you known each other? You clearly have a lot of trust in one another with all of the physical comedy on stage.

ROSE BYRNE: It’s so intuitive, that thing, particularly, I think, in this comedic piece, because everything is just batted back and forth, it’s just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I did not know Kelli before. Obviously, I was a fan, I had seen many of her productions. We had done a benefit reading for the Roundabout theater two years ago. Scott Ellis, who had worked with me and is a dear friend of Kelli’s and has worked with her, was the artistic director of the Roundabout at the time and is now our director. He got us together, and the late, wonderful Todd Haimes brought him the play. Scott put it together for the reading. I thought the play was funny, but it didn’t really lift off until we read the play, and then I was like, Oh, my goodness. And then once we had an audience, I was like, Oh my goodness, this is so marvelous and magical.

DEADLINE: It comes off as you are old friends with an amount of trust that is off the charts. With all the physical comedy, one false move from either of you and something terrible could happen. The night I saw it one of you slipped on the floor a little bit, and I thought if the other had been off her mark just a little it could have been disastrous.

BYRNE: Oh, God.

KELLI O’HARA: I trust you, Rose!

BYRNE: I trust Kel! I in fact, not only do I trust her, but I lean on her and look to her when I’m really, like, lost, or if I dip out. She’s, like, my anchor, truly. And at the same time I feel in incredibly safe hands, I also feel like I’m in spontaneous hands, like, hands who are doing both things. Because that’s what you’re doing in a play, you’re working on two levels. You’re aware of every single person in the audience and everyone who coughs or laughs or sneezes or doesn’t, and then you’re also being present in the place. It’s quite a bizarre endeavor.

O’HARA: It is. And there was no chemistry “build time.” I’ve never heard that comment about chemistry so many times. I’ve done a lot of love stories with men, and people would say, you know, whether or not you have good chemistry. People keep saying Rose and I have good chemistry, and I tell you, it’s been the easiest thing, literally, I think, in my career. We just stepped in and started doing it, and started trusting each other. I’m glad it’s coming off that way. It feels really fun and easy.

DEADLINE: I’d like to ask you about the improvisation that goes on and how things change night by night. At the performance I was at, in the cake-eating scene, Rose, you stuffed your mouth so full of cake that the audience started laughing and both kind of started laughing. It was so in the moment. I assume things like that happen every night, maybe not that particular example, but unexpected things…

O’HARA: Greg, that’s a planned break, believe it or not.

DEADLINE: Is it really? I thought I caught something.

O’HARA: That’s what we wanted you to think.

DEADLINE: Mission accomplished.

O’HARA: Good, good, good.

DEADLINE: But there must be times when something happens that’s not planned, yes?

BYRNE: Yes.

O’HARA: Oh, Rose breaks me a lot.

BYRNE: I’m the worst, I break more than anyone. I’m always laughing at some ridiculous thing, at the antics. Scott Ellis, our director, just came back and gave us notes for the first time in weeks and weeks, and that has been interesting to see his perspective on how much it’s changed, and where it’s changed, and where he wanted to rein it in a little bit, and where he was happy to let us have free rein. So, it was good to sort of check in, because with comedy, you get a laugh and you’re like, Ok, can I dig in more there? Should I not touch it? It’s a constant conversation you’re having, which is what’s so fun about doing a comedy. One of the fun things, anyway.

DEADLINE: Kelli, how do you keep a straight face when she walks in with that wig. And where did that wig come from? Who designed it? [In the play’s hangover scene, in which the two characters are suffering from their night of drinking, Byrne’s character walks onto the set with her long hair mussed and tousled into a vertical mess of beehive proportions, the spectacle of it all eliciting a near showstopper of a laugh from the audience.]

O’HARA: Well, David Brian Brown designed our wigs, but you know that’s the same wig you’ve seen Rose wear all night, it’s just that the wonderful Richard Orton teases it so perfectly up on one side that it looks like an entirely new wig.

BYRNE: Actually I do the big tease, because I’ve got the better angle, and then Rich comes in.

O’HARA: Oh, you do?

BYRNE: Rich does the back of the head. Initially, I came in with a green scarf over my head, which was also quite funny, but I was like, I think it might be funnier if she comes in with the hair.

DEADLINE: Did either of you know this play before? I’d never seen it, but about 10 minutes in, I realized I knew what was going to happen because I remembered an old episode of Maude in which they basically stole the entire play – the characters, the plot, even the scenes. Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan do not end up having a three-way with a man at the end, but other than that…

BYRNE: I didn’t know that. That’s extraordinary.

DEADLINE: Another possible influence that comes to mind is Absolutely Fabulous. Was that show on your mind at all? And did you have any other inspirations in terms of how you were going to play this comedy?

O’HARA: I don’t know AbFab as much. Although I know what it is, I didn’t watch it as much. My real inspirations as a kid were more like Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett, and those types of sketch comedy. Some of the physical stuff I actually think sometimes of Tim Conway and stuff like that. I lived on that stuff, I devoured it as a kid. But doing this, I mean, honestly, I’ve watched Rose a lot. She’ll just leap, and I’ll leap with her. I’ve learned a great deal.

BYRNE: That’s a great question because people have referred to the extraordinary Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders of Absolutely Fabulous, and Lucille Ball, all of those. I wasn’t consciously thinking of them but I feel like all of those influences are in you, and you stand on the shoulders of those extraordinary comedic actresses. You just do. To be mentioned in the same breath as them… But I grew up more watching Fawlty Towers, which I loved with John Cleese and Prunella Scales, and that physical comedy was very formative in a way I think was probably unknown to me. And I still remember the first time I saw Kristen Wiig on Saturday Night Live and I was like, Oh my God, her physical comedy is just iconic. And Maya [Rudolph] and Melissa [McCarthy]. But getting back to the play, no, I didn’t consciously have them all in my mind, but I think it’s all buried in there, right? It’s all just artistic inspiration.

DEADLINE: Kelli, I saw you in Days of Wine and Roses, and you played the very serious drunk scenes that were sort of on the opposite end of the spectrum from the comic drunk scenes of Fallen Angels. What did you learn from each one in terms of playing drunk? Did one influence the other?

O’HARA: It’s a good question. I haven’t actually put them together very much, to be honest. They’re just such different characters, but in a way they could be two different parts of drunkenness, right? [Drinking] can go really south really fast. Even in Fallen Angels, we sort of dissolve and devolve into this terrible argument at the end in the play. It’s not the same [as Days of Wine and Roses], but the breathless freedom of it all is sort of the same as an actor playing it. It’s just being really loose and flexible. I’m just telling really different stories, but they’re my versions of what I know drunkenness to be in different circumstances.

DEADLINE: How much of Fallen Angels changed during rehearsals, not only in terms of the physical comedy but also in the line deliveries? And is it still growing?

O’HARA: Yeah, that’s why Scott had to come and had to, like, reign us back a little bit. Because it’s just expanding and expanding in a really, really fun way. We had a kind of cut-short rehearsal period because Rose, God bless her, was running back and forth to LA with the Oscars and the different things that she was doing. I mean, we definitely set this play well in the room as much as we could, but we really found it during tech, and then when the audience came. There were definitely nights with egg on our face, for sure, and then seeing what fit and what stuck, and helping that grow.

BYRNE: Absolutely. The rehearsal was brief, in a way. I mean, it felt so bizarre. I kept leaving, and Kelli also had some concerts and events she was doing, so there was a lot of coming into rehearsals with little rolly bags behind us. And God bless Scott Ellis. Instead of putting more pressure on me, or on Kelli for that matter, to get it right and find the thing and lock in the jokes, he put less. He trusted that we would rise to the occasion, that we would find it, and we would find it in tech and to Kelli’s point, at a certain point we just needed an audience. It’s a comedy. You don’t know anything until they’re there. It becomes immediately clear if we’re in the right world at all in making this funny.

DEADLINE: Did you learn anything surprising from the audience? A joke that landed in a different way, or something that you didn’t think was going to get a laugh that did?

BYRNE: Every night. Every night I learn something, because there are some people who know Noel Coward and know the world and the time and immediately they get it. And then other people are catching up and don’t know. And it’s a hundred year old play as well.

O’HARA: [In rehearsal] we didn’t have the staircase. We had stairs, but not a playable staircase to work with, so all the stair stuff came once there was an audience, just figuring out what to do. With a comedy, more than anything, you’ve got to have that final collaborator.

DEADLINE: Do you find yourself stretching that particular bit? For people who haven’t seen it, you’re trying to climb up those stairs and doing a very poor job of it. Does that scene change with the audience reaction, or is it pretty much set every night?

O’HARA: Whereas other parts can be very stretched out, a couple of the physical things are pretty set in order to get them right. I’ll be really honest, there was some injury [with the stairs], you know, until we figured out exactly what to do, and so I’ve actually found it easier to kind of stay in that lane now that I have it.

DEADLINE: I’m assuming you don’t improvise with the dialogue?

O’HARA: No, there’s not improvisation We don’t change the dialogue. Maybe the pacingonce in a while, but I think we’re pretty true to the writing. The thing about Noel Coward is that it’s all there, and if you trust it, it really can serve you so well, just to stay true to the dialogue and not start playing around with it.

BYRNE: Absolutely. He’s such a technical, formidable, comedic master. There have been times where I’ve slowed something down, or taken it a hair shorter or a breath longer in the timing, something I’d shift and go, Oh, that did land. It’s so exciting because you can keep mining for things. It’s just a brilliant technical piece of comedic writing. That’s why it’s still funny.

DEADLINE: Any idea what was so obscene back when it was first produced that they apparently had to censor it just to get it on stage?

O’HARA: Well, I think any woman having sex before marriage in 1925 was absolutely…And by the way, I don’t think in the original – Rose, correct me if I’m wrong – but they don’t have a threesome at the end. I mean, they’re kind of alluding to it but not as much as we do. I mean, they’re gonna go off together with the man, but maybe not all once. [Laughs]. Anyway, I think the main horrible, horrifying thing at the time was the idea that two women would not only be talking about sex, but that they had it before they got married, and that they were drunk doing it. That was just not heard of for a woman to show.

BYRNE: Kelli has a scene with Chris Fitzgerald, who plays my husband, where he confronts her on her transgressive behavior and he’s so shocked. And then I have a scene with Aasif Mandvi, who plays her husband Fred, and both of our responses, particularly my Jane, become so defensive about it – and this is in the original – Jane doubles down and says, ‘How dare you? You’re boring…’ Like, these women stand up to their choices. They don’t go, You’re right, I’m sorry, and blah, blah, blah. They’re like, ‘Fuck you, I don’t care.’ Or the equivalent of that. They stand their ground, which is just extraordinary that Coward wrote these two transgressive, lustful women…

O’HARA: Like when my character says that it’s so unfair that men should have the monopoly on wild oats before marriage, and then Rose’s character says, It’s our duty to make them think that we think they have.’ There’s some real risque and modern ideas in there, and I think back then they just couldn’t handle it, to be honest, so they had to make a lot of changes, and even then the only reason it finally got produced was that it was deemed so ridiculous, like a farce, that it never would happen [in real life]. Women would never actually behave like this, so they allowed the play to go on.

DEADLINE: Will you two work again together?

BYRNE: I hope so.

O’HARA: Are you kidding me? I would love it. Seriously, it just has been the most wonderful thing.

BYRNE: Magical. I have such respect for comedy, I think it’s so hard, like Kelli’s comedy, particularly her physical comedy. I remember the first time in the scene when the phone rings, and we’re having dinner, and we’re both like, Oh, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go. And Kelli, I think you might have suggested before you did it, but it was the first time you pushed me to get to the phone. And I just thought, That’s so brilliant, because it was logical, like, This fucking bitch, I’m gonna get her out of my way, I gotta get to the phone. It’s intuitive, it makes sense, and it’s also hilarious because I get to fall. Just a beautiful example of such intuitive comedy. It’s just something you have, you know what I mean? It’s like a decision you can make about, Well, how am I trying to get what I want? And also make it funny.

O’HARA: Oh, that’s cool. Thank you. Remember, I had to feel allowed to push you in the first place and that’s the sign of trust where I thought, Oh, she won’t mind. I’m just gonna push her.

BYRNE: Yes, yes, yes, yes! I think you did ask first, didn’t you? I can’t remember, to be honest with you.

O’HARA: I can’t remember either, but I remember saying after, Oh my god, did I push you too hard? And you said, No, I love it!

DEADLINE: What do you two have coming up after Fallen Angels closes on June 7?

BYRNE: I’m having a holiday. I’m gonna plug my holiday. It’s been lovely and it definitely has been a wild schedule with all of that [Oscar] stuff and then coming into this play, but it’s also been so nourishing and grounding just to be in a room with the company we have, you know, Tracee Chimo, Chris, Aasif, Mark [Consuelos], just a glorious company, right, Kel?

O’HARA: It’s a really great group of people, and really fun. I’ll miss everybody so much, but yeah, just getting back to having a little break, getting back to some concerts, and things like that, and some filming, and seeing what comes next. But this is one of those moments that you sure don’t take for granted. It’s been a lucky time.

DEADLINE: Do you guys want to talk about the Tonys?

O’HARA: I’m delighted to be nominated with my partner here.

BYRNE: My better half, that’s what I call her. It’s so extraordinary, it’s awesome. I’m like the rookie here, so I’m like, oh my god, it’s wild, and this has been such a special time. It’s going to be bittersweet when it’s done, right Kel? You’ve done so many shows but is it still bittersweet?

O’HARA: It’s always bittersweet, and we’re closing on Tony Day, so it’s really gonna be everything all at once.

Fallen Angels began previews at the Todd Haimes Theatre on Friday, March 27, officially opened April 19 and runs through June 7. In addition to Byrne, O’Hara and Consuelos, the cast includes Tracee Chimo, Christopher Fitzgerald and Aasif Mandvi. The production has received five Tony Award nominations: Best Revival of a Play, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play for both Byrne and O’Hara, Best Scenic Design of a Play (David Rockwell) and Best Costume Design of a Play (Jeff Mahshie).

The June 5 performance of Fallen Angels will stream live for subscribers of streaming service BroadwayHD.