Private Lives

Probably Coward’s best known and best loved play, Private Lives will always labour under the weight of familiarity, both the lines and previous performances. Last night certainly did. Tom Attenborough has cast Tom Chambers, a reasonable idea it would seem, and after a rather quiet start he gets into his stride as Elyot. Oddly though he is directed to play him as a youthful and rather petulant boyish young man. It might have worked if Victor, Richard Teverson, had not been cast as a much older and priggish man, which despite being played well simply does not work. Charlotte Ritchie makes a marvelous Sybil, sweetly simpering then wonderfully shrewish. And please, give her some better costumes that at least fit. If Elyot were played as a more knowingly bitter and selfish lover it could be a match made in heavenly hell. Laura Rogers has all it takes to play the acid tongued Amanda and she does it with class, by far the most recognisable of Coward’s characters. Frankly the cast are good, but there is a sense that the director has somehow missed the point and tried to do something new, who knows what, with a play that depends so much on the fine delivery of some of Coward’s funniest lines.
Theatre Royal Brighton
1 February
Andrew Kay
3 stars