BWW Reviews: PRIVATE LIVES Brought a Touch of Refined Comedy to Adelaide

Reviewed Thursday 22nd August 2013

Sir Noël Coward's witty play about a couple who cannot live together, but cannot live without one another, is being given a chance to shine again at the ARTS Theatre, thanks to the Therry Dramatic Society. Private Lives is set in a time of transition, Victorian ideals and values giving way to a more liberated approach to living, and reveals the friction between those holding to the past and those racing to the future.

Elyot and Amanda shared a tempestuous three year marriage, and have now been divorced for five year. Elyot is honeymooning with his second wife, Sybil. As it happens, Amanda is honeymooning with her second husband, Victor, in the room next door. The problem is that Elyot and Amanda were once married to each other and, when they go out onto the adjoining balconies and discover that they are staying at the same hotel, both want to leave. Both of their new spouses, though, refuse to go, and neither Elyot nor Amanda can tell them the true reason that they wish to flee.

As they talk, the spark is rekindled, and they go off together to Amanda's Paris flat, leaving Victor and Sybil to wonder what happened. Learning from their past mistakes they decide on a signal to stop them when they are arguing, calling for a short period of total silence. For a while this appears to be working, but it falls apart just as Sybil and Victor burst in on them. The next morning, over breakfast, is an awkward time that sees Amanda and Elyot bickering as usual. Soon Victor and Sybil begin defending their respective spouses and this quickly escalates, allowing Elyot and Amanda an opportunity to slip out and leave them, to it.

Elyot and Amanda were first played by Coward and his good friend, Gertrude Lawrence, for whom he wrote the play in 1930. Adrianne Allen and Sir Laurence Olivier played Sybil and Victor. Since then, hundreds have appeared in this play in professional and amateur productions world wide, including a production with a true life couple just like Elyot and Amanda; Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Barry Hill is an accomplished and knowledgeable director, with a string of successful productions of Coward's plays to his credit, and he brings that enormous experience to this production. It is all there, the stiff upper lips, the clipped dialogue, the biting barbs delivered with charm and a smile, the impeccable style and more. Most importantly, as any good director will tell you, is casting, and Hill has found a great cast for this production.

John Koch and Dianne k Lang play Elyot and Amanda, and I am sure that Coward and Lawrence would have approved of their interpretations. They captured the spirit of the piece beautifully in two nicely balanced performances, the power balance going to and fro like a seesaw. Lang could have stepped straight out of the pages of a 1930s fashion magazine and Koch, similarly, oozed style. Their characterisations made it easy to believe that they stayed on expensive hotels, travelled the world, owned property, and did little but enjoy life.

Alison Scharber and Brad Martin appear as Sybil and Victor, briefly introduced in the first act, but really coming into their own in the third act. They, too, understand the requirements of a Coward character and find the style and refinement in their characters but, unlike Elyot and Amanda, these two are still clinging to Victorian values. They present characters that are more staid, straight-laced and, dare one say, boring. As act three progresses, though, this veneer breaks down, and Scharber and Martin present their characters in transition as they begin the change towards the lifestyle of Amanda and Elyot.

There is one other role, and that is the maid, Louisa, played by Tamara Bennetts, who manages, in spite of having only a handful of lines, to get a couple of big laughs and threatens to steal the moment.

There is sure to be a rush for tickets, since Coward's plays are always popular and this one, perhaps, more than most, particularly as it is a well-crafted production.

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