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Claire Price in Private Lives |
Together until death, or my ex-wife, do us part
PRIVATE LIVES
Hampstead Theatre
PROSPECTIVE knot-tiers might reconsider after watching this. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Noel Coward took a dim view of marriage.
At least that is the conclusion suggested by the marital feuds and fisticuffs that flare up in his hastily written farce.
Coward’s melodramatic scenes from married life can verge on the tedious at times; mostly, though, they are good fun.
A fantastic set and costumes evoke the glamour of the “golden 1920s”, the era in which the play is set. The performances, meanwhile, are universally confident and do justice to the script’s charm and wit.
We meet Elyot (Jasper Britton) and Sybil (Lucy Briggs-Owen) on their honeymoon at a romantic seaside spot in France. Elyot was once wed to Amanda (Claire Price), but constant squabbling led the two to divorce. However, as he snuggles up to his new bride on the hotel balcony, Elyot finds himself looking back with rose-tinted glasses at his former marriage and wondering if he is in fact still in love with Amanda.
Enter Amanda with new husband Victor (Rufus Wright). The newlyweds have unknowingly booked to spend their honeymoon in the same hotel as
Elyot and Sybil.
Amanda is a rumbustious woman, seemingly out of place in her marriage to straight-edged Victor, who boasts that he is “glad to be normal”.
Predictably, Amanda and Elyot declare their renewed love for each other and secretly run off into the sunset together, leaving their spurned spouses perturbed.
The action, already farcical and frivolous, becomes increasingly absurd as Elyot and Amanda flit between love and acrimony. Victor and Sybil turn up at the Paris apartment where the two adulterers have holed up, resulting in utter mayhem.
This play is about the difficulty of sustaining happiness. Paradise, in Coward’s view, is a very troublesome place.
Until February 28
020 7722 9301 |
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