Private Lives, Ambassadors Theatre review ★★★★★

Noel Coward’s 1930 classic, Private Lives, retains its ability to amuse with its sparkling dialogue and sharp, pitiless observation of human foibles, particularly those of people in love.This production, directed by Christopher Luscombe (The Madness of George III) and designed by Simon Higlett (Singin’ in the Rain), meticulously observes period style, while at the same time highlighting the play’s timelessness.
Coward may have been a bit of a classist snob, but his reading of human frailty and imperfection remains spot on.

Amanda (Patricia Hodge) and Elyot (Nigel Havers), divorced after a tempestuous marriage, are on honeymoon with their new spouses, and as fate would have it, they are staying in adjoining rooms in a charming Deauville hotel, its balconies all creamy pink-and-white striped awnings and Art Deco wrought-iron railings.

The roar of the sea helps set the mood and Mark Jonathan’s lighting hints at the clear skies and ample horizons of the Normandy seaside.

First to appear on the balcony is Elyot with his much younger wife, the besotted Sybil, played by Natalia Walter as a simple, loving, perhaps a little too silly, woman, who clearly married above herself and can’t quite believe her luck.

Elyot is beastly, responding to her wide-eyed professions of love and jealousy of her predecessor with sharp, impatient one-liners. At this point Havers's performance is a touch unconvincing.

As they go off to get ready for dinner, a parallel scene occurs on the adjoining balcony between Amanda and her new husband Victor (Dugald Bruce-Lockhart). A stolid man in tweeds, he relishes his ordinariness – ‘I’m glad I’m normal’ – but he, too, is jealous of his predecessor.

Eventually – and inevitably – Elyot and Amanda find themselves on the balconies at the same time. It’s immediately clear to them, and indeed to the audience, that their love remains very much alive: a corrosive, can’t-live-with-you-can’t-live-without-you kind of love, which Amanda describes as ‘two violent acids bubbling about in a nasty little matrimonial bottle’.

And so, leaving behind the ‘wise, kind and undramatic’ love offered by their new partners, Amanda and Elyot elope together.

Acts II and III are set in Amanda’s Paris flat, a dark, blood-red, richly furnished interior, featuring a grand piano.

Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers in Private Lives. Photo: Tristram Kenton
Here Amanda and Elyot resume their ferocious relationship; and the whole thing comes to a head with the arrival of the wronged spouses. Mayhem ensues, simultaneously hilarious and cringe-making, as verbal violence spills over into physical aggression.

Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers are experienced Coward performers, and the play takes off the moment they come on stage together, perfect as the two easily bored sophisticates, both with a fine line in put-downs, whose flippancy barely disguises an inner tumult – and when that erupts they make it all too believable. Their chemistry is obvious and thrilling.

It’s not easy to play the foils to these two characters, but Natalie Walter and Dugald Bruce-Lockhart make a creditable job of the hapless Sybil and Victor. And Georgia Goodman is excellent in the short role of Amanda’s French maid, Louise, in her West End debut as well as her first French-speaking role.

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