PRIVATE LIVES. To 6 August.
Bath
PRIVATE LIVES
by Noel Coward
Theatre Royal In rep to 6 August 2005
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 3 August 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
TICKETS: 01225 448844
www.theatreroyal.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 July
Clear-sighted production, beautifully acted throughout.Black Theatre, Women's Theatre, Gay Theatre - amid such headings it's easy to forget that the West End audience for whom Noel Coward wrote his 1929 comedy was just as much a particular part of society, if a moneyed, privileged one. One which could be depended upon, three years after Britain's only-ever General Strike and the bruising miners' strike which surrounded it, to sympathise with a character like Elyot Chase.
Able to travel the world when his emotional state requires it, despite having no visible means of earning a living, Elyot despises boring, serious-minded people. Such, maybe, as those who iron his shirts, light his fires or drove the various transports which took him on his journey.
This first production in the 2005 Peter Hall Company summer season at Bath's Theatre Royal (taking up residence for the third successive year and bringing a welcome artistic purpose - this season couples Coward with one of Shakespeare's sex-battle comedies, then follows them with the contrast of Waiting for Godot and Shaw's comic philosophy) is directed by Thea Sharrock, who gives the play's relationships a welcome clarity and logic.
Elyot and ex-wife Amanda meet up on their respective second honeymoons with new partners, unaware they are booked into hotel rooms with adjacent balconies. Michael Siberry's grey-haired Elyot gives the character a world-weariness in line with his maturity and the sense life's a wasteland without the woman who fulfils yet infuriates him. Snapping at his young second wife Siberry pauses between the rhyming words, disgusted she's trapped him into saying anything as banal as "Don't quibble Sibyl."
It's clear from the start that Olivia Darnley's Sibyl merely flatters him. Darnley's smiling insistence signs a marriage doomed even at this stage. If ever a woman was married for what she's not, this is her.
Nor can Charles Edwards' Victor come within miles of Amanda's core. A square-jawed Englishman whose eyebrows march into battle at any challenge to his conventional views, his features spasm at Amanda's reference to the idea of a "progressive" marriage. Edwards and Darnley also make clear why the two second spouses are going to come to eventual blows.
Amanda has all Coward's worst lines, ranging into sexual politics and philosophy - way outside Coward's range. And it shows. Or does when they're not handled with the tact Scacchi brings.
Yet she's also an effortless firebrand, intelligent and volatile, in a part where any evidence of strain is fatal. as she battles with her ex-husband in the Kaligari-like expressionist perspectives of Peter Mumford's Parisian flat, as crazily-angled and chaotic as its inhabitants emotional lifestyle.
With Janet Greaves' bad-tempered French Maid, impatiently holding a tray as the others set to work clearing around her, this may not have quite the depth of Philip Franks' National Theatre or Howard Davies' West End productions in recent years. But it's coherent, comical and sets up an intriguing comparison with Much Ado's Beatrice and Benedict. Classy stuff.
Sibyl: Olivia Darnley
Elyot: Michael Siberry
Victor: Charles Edwards
Amanda: Greta Scacchi
Louise: Janet Greaves
Director: Thea Sharrock
Designer/Lighting: Peter Mumford
Sound: Gregory Clarke
Music consultant: Mick Sands
Choreographer: Jane Gibson
Costume: Luke Smith
Fight director: Terry King
2005-07-26 18:18:50