George Brancos' review The main house at Bath's Theatre Royal is an ideal venue for Noel Coward's intimate comedy Private Lives. Its glorious auditorium curves majestically around a picture-box proscenium arch while every seat can claim to have the best view in the house. The performance was packed, even on a matinee, and unsurprisingly the audience warmed to the quick witticisms and highly polished writing of Coward. The Master For a play that was written in the 1930s, it is a testament to the brilliance of the man known as The Master that very little of it seems dated. Naturally, a glib comment here and a specific reference there belie its age, but the characters could easily be found in modern high society and even contemporary celebrity life. A conniving Amanda, an angry Elyot, and a pair of wimps – why that is just the latest edition of Heat. Coward was ahead of his times in his social commentary, and brilliant at mocking his peers and colleagues. Private Lives, among Coward's big five, is a classic for this. The set and characters  | | Olivia and Michael, who play Sibyl and Elyot |
Peter Hall's production, directed by Thea Sharrock, was hit and miss. The set, designed by Peter Mumford, was a masterpiece. The balcony in act one ingeniously turned on its side so the audience could experience a romantic sunset, and revel in majestic star light. Simplicity abounded. Amanda's Parisian flat was an architectural dream. Jagged edges, skewed paintings, and a cluttered feel enabled a perfect playground for the physical comedy required in acts two and three. The rustic colours and slight surrealism an interesting antithesis to act one. Alas, Elyot and Amanda. Michael Siberry was too angry and struggled to make the most of the wit Coward had written for himself. Elyot is a character who always has a wry grin and half-cocked eyebrow, but Siberry did not find it. Greta Scacchi began brightly as Amanda. Brilliant facial dynamics and a clear sexy definition encapsulating the classic femme fatale. However, too soon Scacchi failed to deliver Amanda's biting edge, inconsistently moving from a quick-quick-slow pace to slow-slow-quick. Curiously, Victor (Charles Edwards) and Sibyl (Olivia Darnley), traditionally cardboard cutout characters designed to help carry the leads, were full of passion and bravado. Character development clearly focused on enhancing the presence of the two unfortunate spouses of Elyot and Amanda. Sibyl was a charming young girl, everso slightly naive, tinged with the stubbornness of a muel. Victor was an hilarious mixture of pompous wimpishness and false bravado. I delighted in the end of act one, when Sibyl and Victor are left to share a cocktail with each other. She was stood with a poise of elegance, he twitching into his glass. A good production of an excellent play  | | Greta and Charles, who play Amanda and Victor |
The denouement of the piece, where we see Victor and Sibyl arguing with each other, while Elyot and Amanda sneak off with each other, encapsulates the play. It also encapsulated this production. Wonderful choreography from director Sharrock resulted in the four sat in a line sharing breakfast. The troubled balance of the characterisation, however, distracted the action of the leads leaving together, as I was more interested in the relationship of the squabblers. Nonetheless, this was a good production of an excellent play. Hall's anniversary production of Waiting for Godot is sure to be a huge success. Kirsty Gardner's review If high moral code is the key to life, then Private Lives, the flagship of the Noel Coward fleet, is definitely a show to be avoided. It's also best avoided if you like a plot with a definite ending rather than a bit of frippery. However, despite these caveats, it's all jolly good fun, and a fine way of passing an evening. Sparkly inter-war loucheness Private Lives centres on the utterly selfish upper-class love lives of divorced Amanda and Elyot who, having remarried, find themselves on separate honeymoons on adjoining balconies in a hotel in France. The rest is utterly predictable, yet amusing in its audacity. Amanda abandons her drippy new husband, and Elyot does the same to his young ingenue, and they both debunk to Paris. Since they are utterly selfish, the outcome is also predictable, and in their wake, they abandon Sibyl and Victor, who are changed from innocents to harridan and posturing idiot. This was a vehicle Coward wrote for himself and Gertrude Lawrence, and still it remains a vehicle for just two of the actors - in this case the wonderful Greta Scacchi and Michael Siberry - who literally sparkle with inter-war loucheness.  | | Greta Scacchi on stage in Private Lives |
Poor Olivia Darnley and Charles Edwards are left with little more than cardboard cutout characters to play with, yet they manage splendidly, she with super-clipped vowels, and he with bluster. Light-souffle fun This production is one of four plays comprising the annual Peter Hall season at Bath, and is running in repertoire with Much Ado About Nothing. It is the only one directed not by Hall himself, but Thea Sharrock who makes a good job of a well tried and tested production. Design too adds to the textures of this production - Amanda's evening dress is a deep scarlet, Sibyl's is baby blue, and the symmetrical balconies at the hotel echo the architecture of the period. Fabulous, though, is the Paris flat. Not at all the usual chic apartment, but something much more avant-garde, almost an artist's studio. Here, the chaotic characters at the heart of Private Lives spend long, languid days in a cubist painting, with doors and windows all at crazy angles. All in all this is great fun, and as light as a souffle. But don't try to analyse it too closely - underneath the surface there is nothing there! | 
