by Noël Coward
Directed by Christopher Luscombe
Designed by Simon Higlett
The Nigel Havers Theatre Company
Chichester Festival Theatre
Thursday 18th November 2021, 14.30 p.m.
CAST:
Nigel Havers – Elyot
Patricia Hodge – Amanda
Dugal Bruce-Lockhart – Victor
Natalie Walter- Sybil
Aicha Kossoko- Louise
Private Lives is a favourite Noël Coward play, yet it has not yet been reviewed on this blog, because I haven’t seen a production in the ten years since I started writing here. This one is touring extensively right on till mid 2022. It will be coming to a theatre near you. Not only does it have stellar leads but the Christopher Luscombe (direction) / Simon Higlett (design) combination has resulted in some of the best plays we’ve seen in recent years.
The year before I started the blog, 2010, I saw the play twice within weeks, at Salisbury Playhouse (directed by Philip Wilson), then Richard Eyres production at The Bath Theatre Royal (starring Kim Cattrell as Amanda and Lisa Dillon as Sybil). It was probably the first time we saw Lisa Dillon, since then one of our favourite actresses. As we said at the time, the simpler less starry Salisbury production was the one we preferred.
In the early 1970s I saw it once or twice a year. The language school advertised the Wednesday Drama Evenings and three weeks out of four, these were original sketch shows. The fourth was a ‘rehearsed costumed and acted reading’ and before I arrived these plays had been produced by my boss, Alan. He continued to appear for just two The Importance of Being Earnest and Private Lives, which were his favourites, and like Noël Coward, he played Elyot. His wife Beryl played Amanda. He always told me I was not suitable for either Wilde or Coward, and I was expelled from the stage to lights and sound. Karen played Sibyl. Our later Best Man, Nick, played Victor. The thing is Karen and Nick were in their early 20s. Alan and Beryl were in their mid 50s. However, this age differential is about the par for the many AmDram productions of the play. What made the performances most embarrassing is that while it was supposed to be a reading, Elyot and Amanda were both word perfect without scripts, having done it for thirty odd years.
So the theatre is currently crammed with colour blind and gender blind productions, so this one is age blind (as was ours!). Age blind it is. Nigel Havers is 70 (though might pass for twenty years younger). Patricia Hodge is 75, though again looks far younger. The script says of Elyot:
He is about thirty, quite slim and pleasant looking.
As it happens, we saw Nigel Havers in The Importance of Being Earnest 2014 production which was equally age-blind, and got away with it by framing it within an AmDram production by The Bunbury Company of Players.
The plot
If you’re vaguely interested, you should know it. Elyot and Amanda divorced five years earlier after a tempestuous marriage. Both have remarried to younger but duller spouses, Elyot to Sybil, Amanda to Victor. Both sets of couples are on their honeymoons in Deauville … and the first night too. By coincidence, they’re in adjoining rooms with adjoining balconies. Elyot and Amanda meet, rekindle their love and run away to her apartment in Paris where they continue to row. Then Victor and Sybil arrive.
Until they do, the whole play is two person dialogue. You never seen more than two of the characters on stage at a time.
The set
This is touring everywhere. There is always a problem with Noël Coward in that he envisaged the stage design and wrote specifically for the furniture, doors and objects. There is little to no wriggle room for an inventive director. You’re stuck with Coward’s directions right down to the number and placing of the ashtrays. On ashtrays, both cigarette moments in the play are integral and unmissable. They added no extraneous others.
The set is designed for a standard small proscenium stage and looks stranded on Chichesters massive thrust stage. This is why touring productions at Chichester look inferior to homegrown Chichester productions. This one was spawned on Bath’s tight proscenium stage and will mainly tour on smaller proscenium stages. Act one’s twin balconies opens out for the apartment, which will stun audiences across the land with its rich detail. To us, it wasn’t right. Overdone a tad on the background, with costumes that fail to hit the heights. What’s Elyot doing in a plain blue dressing gown? And Amanda in simple cream pyjamas? This is Nöel Coward. It’s supposed to be flamboyant. Instead it’s suave. Weak costumes throughout.
There is a delineated stage area sitting on top of Chichester’s semi-circular thrust stage, at the back. They never step outside it even for the encores. I couldn’t believe they confined themselves at that point. In Chichester the action is A LONG WAY from the front row. That is a barrier. Acres of black empty space between acting area and audience, and not for the first time. It’s probably the biggest space on the tour. It was packed and not only that, so was the restaurant at lunchtime. Masks reminders are prominent and largely observed, though the one unmasked person in the row in front was the one with the cough!
Acting / delivery
I’m happy with age-blind, though it makes the kissing a little squirming in the seat. They perform so smoothly together. They milked the lines about Amanda cricking her neck during the Act II sofa snog, then Elyot struggled up with a dead leg / limp / bad back to great effect. The audience were in tears of laughter at the scene, especially her reluctance to engage in lovemaking soon after a heavy meal. The biggest laugh of all was Elyot’s assertion that promiscuity is “a little different … I’m a man.”
Patricia Hodge, if we’re going for comparison, was better on the lines than a slightly wooden Kim Catrell in 2010, though she lacked the sexual allure the part might have … understandably. However, the Richard Eyres production with Kim Cattral moved to Toronto, with Paul Gross taking over the male lead. That version has online extracts (LINKED), which reminded me that the fight scene between Amanda and Elyot was way more physical (and brilliantly timed it was too) compared to the rather tepid one here.
Nigel Havers was “Private Lives 101.” A strict straight down the middle Elyot. I find Coward plays benefit from a little step aside from a standard interpretation … I’m thinking Rick Mayall, Rufus Hound, Andrew Scott. Nigel Havers’ version of Elyot is a perfectly performed professional interpretation, but lacks in freshness and originality.
Private Lives demands a sprightly dance, and singing from both, and the physical fight scene. They mastered all those tasks with aplomb, even drawing applause for the dance, though as above, the fight scene is better with younger actors. I was pleased for a change to see the programme listing the Noël Coward music clearly and separately. I noticed at least one cut. In the script, Elyot says in the text he was madly in love with a woman in South Africa, and Amanda asks Did she have a ring through her nose? I’d have cut that one too, and I recalled it because we used to cut it too (it’s heavily crossed out in my copy). They didn’t change the word that Elyot and Amanda use to stop bickering between themselves for a two minute break: Solomon Isaacs. It’s a rather odd and unfortunate choice, though the fun Coward has was that they shorten it to Sollocks which sounds like Bollocks.
It is a short play. The first interval is after 35 minutes. Then Coward’s Act II and Act III are run together without an interval (minimal set change … just moving a sofa and chair). It started a good 6 or 7 minutes late (getting elderly people in and up flights of stairs and along rows), the interval was extended for the same reason, and we were still outside at twenty-five to five from a two thirty start. This is why you can afford to give those classic lines some ‘air.’
The programme mentions Coward’s advice to Gertrude Lawrence when he sent her the first draft of the play in 1930, inviting her to co-star with him. He advised:
Read it slowly as though you were playing it. It would sound awfully scrappy if read quickly owing to the shortness of most of the sentences.
Noël Coward, letter of 7 January 1930
The play is a masterpiece partly because it is bereft of monologues and uses short dialogue superbly. It is instantly noticeable that Havers and Hodge can deliver the lines in a relaxed way and touch every corner of the theatre. First class projection from both. But, oh, dear. We’ve seen Sybil done with an “annoying laugh.” Here she has an annoyingly shrill shouting voice, which is maybe the director interpreting why she’s annoying. It’s piercing and she’s shouting. We’ve seen her before and she’s been very good, which is why I blame the direction. Such a contrast to Havers and Hodge.
We thought Dugal Bruce-Lockhart as Victor was very good in Act One on the balcony. We liked his performance and stage presence. But in acts two and three? If I’d been the director and seen it today, it would have been “put the understudy on tomorrow.” Sorry, I almost never get personal. But did this guy have a bus to catch in Act Three? He gabbled at shouting volume. Was he looking at his watch? It was as bad a “high speed matinee gabble” as I’ve seen and rendered some of his lines meaningless, even in the fabulous punch-up scene with Elyot (who of course delivered his lines perfectly). Actors will understand the term. There are tales about actors dissing matinees but at venues like Chichester and Bath, they’re going to be the largest audiences of the week. It was virtually full. We were on the younger end of the audiences for a change instead of the older. They came out for Havers and Hodge and they loved them. Respect is due. We watched older patrons struggling in. It was a special day out for many. OK, I’m a total bastard, but I found Victor’s high speed gabble unacceptable and disrespectful to a matinee audience.He could act perfectly well in Act One.
So I thought both Sybil and Victor were problematic. It is the biggest space to fill on the tour, though the acoustics are excellent. Maybe the physical remove from the audience because the stage area was set back, coupled with the size of the place, led them to shout rather than project calmly and confidently like the headliners. The audience is there for Havers / Hodge though. You can feel the thrill radiating through the audience as each of them appeared. That’s what it’s about,
It’s hard to rate it. I think both Salisbury and Bath in 2010 were better versions. It’s a great play and there hasn’t been a major production in years, though in that time I’ve seen three Blithe Spirit (including the current film) and three Present Laughter. A major production was overdue. This is a classic, though that also means unoriginal, production. You couldn’t fail to enjoy it, but it lacked a certain Noël Coward sparkle. Three stars.
***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
PLAYS BY NÖEL COWARD
- Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2010 (Alison Steadman)
- Blithe Spirit, by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2019 (Jennifer Saunders)
- Blithe Spirit FILM 2021 (Judi Dench)
- Fallen Angels, by Noël Coward, Salisbury Playhouse
- Hay Fever by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal
- Relative Values by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal
- This Happy Breed by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal
- Present Laughter, by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal, 2003 Rik Mayall (retrospective)
- Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2106, Samuel West
- Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Chichester 2018, Rufus Hound
- Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Old Vic 2019, Andrew Scott
- Private Lives by Noël Coward, Nigel Havers Theatre Company, 2021, Chichester
- Private Lives, by Noël Coward, Donmar Warehouse, London 2023
- Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter, by Emma Rice, Salisbury Playhouse, 2023
- The Vortex, by Noël Coward, Chichester Festival Theatre 2023
CHRISTOPHER LUSCOMBE director
The Argument, Theatre Royal Bath 2019
The Nightingales, Chichester 2018
Travels With My Aunt, Chichester 2016
Twelfth Night, RSC 2017
Love’s Labour’s Lost– RSC 2014
Love’s Labour’s Won RSC 2014
Love’s Labour’s Lost, RSC / Chichester 2016
Much Ado About Nothing, RSC / Chichester 2016
While The Sun Shines, by Terence Rattigan, Bath 2016
Nell Gwynne, Globe 2015
NIGEL HAVERS
The Importance of Being Earnest 2014 directed by Lucy Bailey
PATRICIA HODGE
Copenhagen, Chichester Minerva 2018
Travels With My Aunt, Chichester 2016
Relative Values, Bath Theatre Royal, 2013
NATALIE WALTER
Jerusalem, Watermill Newbury 2018
A Little Hotel On The Side, Bath, 2013
Peter Viney's Blog 
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