PRIVATE LIVES. To 29 March.

Colchester

PRIVATE LIVES
by Noel Coward

Mercury Theatre To 29 March 2003
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 29 March 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval

TICKETS: 01206 573948
www.mercurytheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 March

Gregory Floy's parting production for the Mercury ensemble he's helped develop is a superb gift to theatre and audiences alike.Light, comic, thoughtful, detailed, well-played (in one case outstandingly), this production makes even the most embarrassing lines pass convincingly.

Having hit on a deep truth for the between-Wars West End stage, that 'deep down in their private lives' few people are normal, Coward uses the idea as no more than a gateway to a show-off of two temperamentally interlocking yet incompatible personalities.

One, Amanda, is given an appallingly self-conscious line about crinolines, followed at once by a perceptive shaft against men's perceptions of women. If only Coward knew more, what a writer he might have been.

Floy's production perceptively shows the divorced Amanda and Elyot's new 'other halves' to be sensible individuals yet, temperamentally, calm-water versions of the original partners. Miranda Floy's smilingly dependent Sybil and Justin Grattan's Victor as dependably upright as Elyot but with a mind conventionally half a league behind are believable substitutes for the real-thing originals.

Ignatius Anthony has never been better at Colchester. Tall, rock-solid, wittily smug, at emotional moments his Elyot stands like a Mount Rushmore monument feeling a slight shift in an underlying tectonic plate. It's clear the re-united pair's 'sollocks' code-word for silence when an argument's brewing is more acceptable when he evokes it rather than Amanda.

Floy makes clear, in the cigarette-lighting incident mid second act, how this pair's rows originate in the different speeds at which they move from humour to seriousness and the accompanying self-absorption that prevents them 'reading' the other.

Praise for the Mercury's ensemble company, yes. But Julia Tarnoky is here for the first time, after long spells with Howard Barker groupie company The Wrestling School. Few playwrights are further apart than Barker and Coward, but even in a role recently played by Juliet Stevenson and Lindsay Duncan she shines radiantly as ideal casting. Here's lightness and grace, but no butterfly. Tarnoky's Amanda is thoughtful, reflective at times. Maybe a honing on the acerbic economy of Barker's wit is perfect training for Coward's flummery.

Anyway, it's a great performance, one to treasure. As is the restrained neatness of Sara Perks' set for the Paris flat. Overall, delectable.

Sibyl Chase: Miranda Floy
Elyot Chase: Ignatius Anthony
Victor Prynne: Justin Grattan
Amanda Prynne: Julia Tarnoky
Louise: Charlene Robertson

Director: Gregory Floy
Designer: Sara Perks
Lighting: Helen Morley
Movement: Wendy Allnutt
Fight director: Richard Ryan

2003-03-24 12:13:55