Image credit: Johan Persson
Written by Noel Coward
Directed by Blanche McIntyre
Royal Exchange Theatre
⭐️⭐️⭐️
The wonderfully acerbic sparring of a Noel Coward play will always ensure at least a semi decent night out at the theatre. This new production by Blanche McIntyre rises to the top like a perfectly placed olive in a good Martini. However it perhaps offers one that leaves the audience more stirred than shaken. Here the warring couples may deftly fire their insults but ultimately McIntyre never allows the barbs and violence to descend into palpable danger. It is perhaps telling that by the end, the stage is littered with uncrushed grapes and dainty rolls of cold meat instead of shards of glass and broken ashtrays.
The interplay between Steve John Shepherd and Jill Halfpenny as the couple locked into this love/hate relationship is capable of sparkling like a well cut diamond that can slice through glass but stops short of inciting the full horror of domestic cruelty. Shepherd is excellent dropping comic lines and acerbic asides with perfect timing. All laconic, louche style that perfectly evokes a rakish matinee-idol of the period, he is simply a joy to watch. Jill Halfpenny gives a more inscrutable study of Amanda, at times cool and emotionally distant, then full of kittenish charm before she unleashes some formidable claws. They make for an attractive pairing but their onstage chemistry does not always convince as a couple who can neither live together or be apart.
The unfortunate other spouses in this messy marital ménagerie are Victor and Sybil. Daniel Miller is a perfect foil as the dependable but stuffy “cotton wool Englishman” who embarks on the honeymoon from hell as his bride elopes with her ex and he ends up lumbered with the hysterical Sybil. Shazia Nicholls certainly leans into the shrewish dramatics of an abandoned bride but never fully convinces as the naive young bride wed to an older dashing suitor. The costume designs are on point for the period but somehow make this bride look rather matronly beside the older but much more stylish Amanda. In the final scene Miller finally unravels and rather like Basil Faulty and his very own Sybil, the two spurned partners descend into the marital mayhem as Elyot and Amanda sit back and watch gleefully like tricoteuses at the guillotine.
The set design by Dick Bird perfectly evokes the style and class of the world as seen by Coward. Sleek chrome gleams alongside the sharp black and white decor in the first half while a cosy but messily chic Parisienne apartment is the setting for the couples second attempt at domestic bliss. Both effectively serve a production in the round to illustrate the ring of a wedding band and the circular pattern of a couple locked in the hamster wheel of a toxic relationship. There are however some issues with this revolving set. It can be highly effective in providing some high points of theatrical drama as it moves to the emotional tempo of the production but it is highly frustrating if you end up at other points with half the performers faces obscured by parts of the set.
Private Lives is stylish, intermittently sharp, but ultimately too well-behaved for a play that should leave scorch marks. The laughs are guaranteed given Coward’s ability to write snappy dialogue that still entertains. Yet when violence erupts it fails to shock and gets watered down into clumsy antics where the only truly lasting damage is inflicted on the grand piano. In a modern world so keenly aware of the lasting harm of physical and psychological domestic abuse, McIntyre may feel compelled to be well-behaved and mindful but Coward’s original text was never intended to be morally sanitised.
Live Art Alive 