PRIVATE LIVES. To 28 February.
London.
PRIVATE LIVES
by Noel Coward. to Feb 28
Hampstead Theatre To 28 February 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm & 11, 18 Feb 2.30pm.
Audio-described 21 Feb 3pm.
Captioned 24 Feb.
Post-show Discussion (with speech-to-text transcription) 24 Feb.
Post-Show Discussion; 11 Feb 2.30pm.
Runs 2hr 10min One interval.
.
TICKETS: 020 7722 9301.
www.hampsteadtheatre.com
Review: Carole Woddis 28 January.
Surface success.
They make quite a claim in Hamsptead’s programme: that the 1962 revival of Noel Coward’s Private Lives by James Roose-Evans, Hampstead’s founding director, started Coward’s rehabilitation after his displacement by the working class `kitchen sink’ brigade. Certainly in my theatregoing lifetime, Coward, like Terence Rattigan, has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance. Private Lives now gets revived pretty frequently, with various degrees of success. One of the better ones was directed by Philip Franks at the Lyttelton a decade ago, with Anton Lesser and Juliet Stevenson as Elyot and Amanda, the couple who can’t live with or without each other.
Lucy Bailey, who orchestrated a revival of a forgotten batch of one-act Cowards at Chichester two years ago with brilliant elan, has less success here with Coward’s comedy classic.
Not that it doesn’t look wonderful. You come out singing a hymn to Katrina Lindsay’s curvaceous south of France balcony and her second act Parisian attic apartment (though the point of Amanda employing a French maid for such limited demands as the one presented here entirely escaped me).
Bailey, forever the iconoclast, has imposed a quasi emotional realism over Coward’s brittle carapace - written under conditions of severe inner repression yet sparkling with bon mots and the most acute psychological apercus concerning the nature of men, women and love. She has, like Franks before her, decided to re-emphasise Coward’s darker underbelly. The result, in performances from Jasper Britton as Elyot and Claire Price as his squabbling soul-mate, is mixed. Instead of the sense of supressed violence, barely kept in check by superficial social chit-chat, here we get open warfare.
Britton starts glum and gets glummer. Price looks stunning in silky ballgown and jim-jams but rather than conveying headstrong and mercurial, ends up shrieky. Lucy Briggs-Owen and Rufus Wright as the respective second spouses turn in nicely complementary portraits of kind if dull convention and Jules Melvin as the maid has the unenviable task of doing practically nothing in full view of the audience.
Even a slightly off-key revival, though, can’t lessen the pleasure of marvelling all over again at Coward’s glossy social Exocet.
Sybil Chase: Lucy Briggs-Owen.
Elyot Chase: Jasper Britton.
Victor Prynne: Rufus Wright.
Amanda Prynne: Claire Price.
Louise: Jules Melvin.
Director: Lucy Bailey.
Designer: Katrina Lindsay.
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick.
Sound/Music: Errolyn Wallen.
Choreographer: Fiona Creese
Fight director: Terry King.
Assistant director: Peter Cant.
2009-01-30 00:58:05