Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford- until 26 March 2022
Reviewed by Antonia Hebbert
5*****
One witty, pithy line after another, delivered with perfect timing and precision. Noel Coward was barely 30 when he wrote and performed in Private Lives, his brilliant, perceptive comedy about a fiery couple who have divorced but meet again, on honeymoons with new partners. It’s the one with lines that you’ve heard (‘Very flat, Norfolk’), and many more lines you’d like to remember. Nigel Havers and Patricia Hodge play the leads Elyot and Amanda. They are considerably older than 30, but they are so good that it really doesn’t matter. They even riff a bit on ageing, with a suggestion at one point of creaky bones. Every line is relished and delivered in pitch-perfect style, as they rediscover their sizzling attraction to each other. As Coward put it, ‘I am terribly anxious to keep the performance on such a level, that however lightly we may be playing, we can always switch to complete seriousness’. This production achieves that, with laugh-aloud moments that turn to emotional intensity, with the help of beguiling music and dancing. (As Amanda says in another quotable line, ‘Strange how potent cheap music is’.)
Coward also wrote ‘I’m all for being really abandoned in the love scenes’ and this 1930 play certainly puts paid to the idea that everything before the 1960s was buttoned up and prudish. Elyot and Amanda’s erotic charge and wit is contrasted with the respectable flatness of their new partners Sybil and Victor (Natalie Walter and Dugald Bruce-Lockhart, rising manfully to the challenge of being a bit dim and boring).
The set for the first act is the twin balconies of a French seaside hotel, all very bright and pretty. The curtain rises after the interval to reveal something totally different – the very fine deep red interior of Amanda’s Paris apartment. Not a very subtle metaphor maybe, but impressive. Nice 1930s outfits too. The designer is Simon Higlett. Christopher Luscombe directs.