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Private Lives
By: Noel Coward
Duration: 160 minutes
With: Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan
The Albery theatre
St Martin's Lane
London WC2
Leicester Square tube |
Performances
Tue-Sat 8pm
Sat mat 3pm
Sun mat 4pm
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In Short:
Noel Coward's classic
lives on.
In Full:
Everyone loves an intimate
affair, and Private Lives is no exception. Small wonder the current
revival of Noel Coward's most produced play is playing to full
houses at a time when half the West End is less than half full.
What is surprising is that
Coward himself once dismissed the play and attributed its crowd-pleasing
properties to nothing more sophisticated than the titillation
factor of references to sex. Time has proved this tale of two
divorcees who fall for each other all over again to be the kind
of classic worth watching decade after decade.
And the current production
is particularly strong. Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan dazzle
as the hypocritically complacent 1930s couple whilst demonstrating
that the havoc love can wreak hasn't changed over the years.
If Emma Fielding and Adam Godley fair less well as the prissy
Sibyl and Victor, they can hardly be blamed for respecting their
function as light-weight side kicks to such feisty protagonists.
Indeed director Howard Davies
doesn't put a foot wrong. He draws particularly on the theme
of travel, deftly warming to the unchanging relationships of
Coward's characters. The play remains as effortlessly engaging
today as when first penned.
Helena Thompson
Theatre
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