Private Lives
\nBy Noel Coward<\/p>\n
State Theatre Company of South Australia
\nand Queensland Theatre Company
\nDunstan Playhouse
\nUntil December 13, 2006.<\/p>\n
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
Of Private Lives, a play he wrote in four days in 1929 while staying at the Cathay Hotel in Shanghai, Noel Coward remarked it \u201cwas well-constructed on the whole, but psychologically unstable.\u201d He describes writing it propped up in bed with a writing block and an Eversharp pencil \u2013 and it is certainly an eversharp view of the fickleness of love. <\/p>\n
Not since Oscar Wilde\u2019s The Importance of Being Earnest has a play so masqueraded as lightweight comedy while forensically examining the hypocrisies and anxieties of its audience. Perhaps the main source of that psychological instability in Private Lives is the melancholy proposition that, unlike the horse and carriage, love and marriage rarely go together at all. <\/p>\n
This is especially true for Coward\u2019s characters, Elyot and Amanda, whose marriage quickly marked the end of romance. Act One of Private Lives opens with each re-married and honeymooning in Capri, only to discover- in Coward\u2019s suave use of preposterous coincidence – that they have rented adjoining villas. To the chagrin of their new, duller and more compliant spouses, Elyot and Amanda begin their peekaboo relationship all over again. <\/p>\n
In this strangely charmless production from the Queensland Theatre Company, director Michael Gow has found little of the wit in the play and none of its currency. Designer Robert Kemp has resisted the usual art deco options and gone for Raoul Dufy instead. With highly painterly flats buzzing with marine detail the French Riviera is invoked in Act One and a rich red odalisque Parisian apartment for Acts Two and Three. The costumes are true to period, and we are reminded of the potency of cheap music with meaningful repetitions of such tunes as It Had to Be You. But there is no immediacy to the satire and little of the play\u2019s sense of worldly disdain and disappointment. Instead of Coward, Gow gives us P.G. Wodehouse, a Wooster world of crimped hair, crimped ideas, vacuous and without purpose.<\/p>\n
Looking in the program at the lively rehearsal stills of the actors in casual attire, it seems none of their verve has translated to the production itself. Perhaps if more of themselves and some of this century were invested, the performances could lift above stagy English caricature. Jean Marc-Russ has sardonic moments as Elyot, but the \u201cchemical what d\u2019you call \u2018ems\u201d with Helen Christinson\u2019s lacklustre Amanda fail to spark. As for the supports, Sybil and Victor, Annie Maynard and James Evans are shrill and wooden as Act Three grinds to its chaotic conclusion. <\/p>\n
Those who remember the State Theatre production with Hugo Weaving and Heather Mitchell will know that Private Lives can be successfully played with a lightly English-ed Australian vernacular. It is a play that still has plenty to say, especially when young marriage is so much in vogue. But in this production, hobbled by stale theatrics and insufferably mannered diction, Coward\u2019s pungent dialogue has no way of finding the contemporary voice it deserves. <\/p>\n
\u201cHobbled by stale theatrics\u201d The Adelaide Review, No.306, December 3, 2006, p.15<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Private Lives By Noel Coward State Theatre Company of South Australia and Queensland Theatre Company Dunstan Playhouse Until December 13, 2006. Reviewed by Murray Bramwell Of Private Lives, a play he wrote in four days in 1929 while staying at the Cathay Hotel in Shanghai, Noel Coward remarked it \u201cwas well-constructed on the whole, but psychologically unstable.\u201d He describes writing it propped up in bed with a writing block and an Eversharp pencil \u2013 and it is certainly an eversharp […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-state-theatre-company","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":954,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions\/954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}