Very Dry, Coward (Private Lives - Noel Coward)

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Product:	Private Lives - Noel Coward
Date:	16/08/01 (198 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very funny, clever, and satirical, Amazingly undated themes

Disadvantages: Need to see it a few times to catch all the jokes

"Very flat, Norfolk." Some plays are perfect for reading, some for studying and others for dissecting. Private Lives by Noel Coward is a play to act in or to watch being performed. It is a wonderful comedy, packed with Coward's classic wit and humour.

"Very flat, Norfolk." Reading Amanda's response to the first piece of information she receives about Eliot's new young wife is one thing. But hearing it spoken offers a whole new depth of meaning, and a better understanding of Amanda's apparently nonchalant attitude to her ex-husband.

With a cast of only five, Coward had to give each one a strong personality. The young, principled and excitable Sybil, and her much older, wiser, and more cynical new husband Eliot Chase provide a perfect contrast to each other, and are complemented very cleverly with the other couple. Amanda is sophisticated, fiery and passionate, in stark contrast to Victor Prynn, her ramrod-backed husband, whose character reeks of gentlemanly pedanticism and a no-nonsense superior, and rather condescending attitude.

Even Louise, the maid who only appears twice in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it role, is a rounded character - with a few clever stage directions, and a careless comment from Eliot thrown in, we learn that Louise is a clumsy and emotional character, who mutters with distaste at her employer's andtics and comes from a home background of teasing and bullying.

The play begins as Eliot and Sybil arrive in France on the first day of their honeymoon. Sybil is the picture of young simpering innocence and excitement, like a child who has come home from school with full marks in a spelling test. Eliot is rather less animated. His somewhat indifferent attitude to his young bride and his dry one-liners bounce off his new wife, and there is a hint of the tension to follow.

Very soon, Eliot realises that his ex-wife Amanda is staying at the same hotel, also on Honeymo
on with her new husband Victor. Amanda and Eliot had divorced. Their relatively short marriage was tainted by endless quarrels fuelled by jealousy and fiery tempers, but their feelings for each other were obviously never fully resolved.

In a well-produced performance of the play, Cowards's lines and stage directions ensure that the audience will see the sparks fly between Amanda and Eliot from the first moment they see each other. In fact it is from that first icy reunion in Act I that the play really begins to move - and never stops until the final curtain.

Among the rip-roaring arguments, sulky back-biting and passionate love scenes, don't lose concentration for a moment lest you miss one of Coward's multiple innuendos or one-liners. And don't forget to listen out for Vera Williams' "hairbrush" - a particularly risque line which washes over most members of the audience.

I was in an amateur production of this play a few months ago, playing Sybil Chase. It was my first time on stage, and I couldn't have asked for a better part, or a better play. If you get the ooportunity to go and see, or even to be a part of a production of Private Lives, don't pass it up! We rehearsed for two months, and every reading, performance and rehearsal brought something new to the play, and my understanding of it, not to mention my comprehension of some of the more obscure references.

The play also includes some of Noel Coward's own musical composition, notably "Someday I'll Find You" a recording of which you can find on audio galaxy sung as a duet by Noel Coward himself, and Gertrude Lawrence, who starred as Amanda on stage opposite Coward in 1930

Set in the late 1920's a good production of the play is often as enjoyable for it's costumes and scenery as anything else. However the themes that run through the play, of people's Private Lives, volatile relationships, principles
and promises being turned upside down, and romantic episodes becoming quite unpredictable, is just as relevant, and humourously and bitterly meaningful today as it was seventy years ago.

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