Noel Coward’s Private Lives
Pitlochry Festival Theatre - 30/07/22
A play by Noel Coward should ensure a full house on a Saturday night for the genteel audiences who support this outstanding theatre in the Highlands. Sadly, this was not the case. A production of genuine ability and style, this show could only garner a small but select audience. As a lady commented next to me who regularly came up from Stirling “Many modern audiences ask, ‘Who is Noel Coward?’”
Perhaps his style of restraint and wit does not translate to modern audiences. Maybe his theme of marital discord and what could be translated today as abuse, do not seem amusing. These are the remit of East Enders or Love Island not of couples who frequent Cap Ferret or St Moritz. Coward wrote the original draft while recovering from influenza in Shanghai. He persuaded his long-time collaborator Gertrude Lawrence to perform with him, with Lawrence Olivier and Adrianne Allen. It opened at the Kings Theatre in Edinburgh 18th August 1930 and transferred to the Phoenix in London on 24th September playing to packed houses. The original production received mixed revues with the ‘New Statesman’ discerning the sad side to the play in its story of a couple who can live neither with nor without each other: "It is not the least of Mr. Coward's achievements that he has ... disguised the grimness of his play and that his conception of love is really desolating." This would seem to be the reaction from the Pitlochry audience. It is hard to believe that Coward had to appeal to the Lord Chamberlain to approve the second act love scene as the characters were not married. Since then, nearly every major star of theatre has performed this play.
However literary criticism aside, this production was well directed by Amy Liptrott, and endeavours to bring a modern sensibility to a difficult piece for any modern company. The set design is terrific, using the revolve to swing from matching balconies to a Parisian drawing room. The cast cannot be faulted in their clipped accents and their stylish demeanour delivering the witty ripostes and asides with style.
Physically they capture the era exceptionally well and only occasionally does the movement descend into a more modern genre. More could have been made of the song ‘Some Day I’ll Find You’, one of the loveliest Coward composed for the piece. It would have been a lovely moment. For the cast it is a difficult four- hander to sustain, only broken by the appearance of Louise, the maid, played by Deirdre Davis channelling her ‘two soups’ Julie Walters act. Amelia Donkar is superb as Amanda matched by Tom Richardson as Elyot. Catching the sophistication of the period in what is currently an unsophisticated age. There is a solid performance by Marc Small as Victor and a delightful one by Nalân Burgess, both of whom have three hours ago played multiple roles in ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’. The problem is the play itself. I regret to say from someone who enjoys the wit and incisiveness Coward’s work. In a ‘woke’ age the idea of couples sparring both verbally and physically seems to belong to television. Perhaps the box office, who never lies, is saying that too.
