Private Lives
- Robert Beale
- 54 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Noel Coward
Royal Exchange Theatre Company
Royal Exchange, Manchester
March 27-May 22, 2026: 2 hrs 5 mins
This production of Private Lives, Noel Coward’s merciless unveiling of human nastiness, is every bit as sleek, shiny and luxurious as the furniture of the opening scene, as designed by Dick Bird.
But with that scene – supposedly the balconies of two adjacent hotel apartments in Deauville, where new honeymooners Sibyl, Elyot, Amanda and Victor have just arrived – done fully in the round, Royal Exchange style, there is inevitably a problem. It can’t be realistic, and the actors can’t move completely enough to be face-on to every part of the auditorium sometimes. Answer: do it with a revolve.
The rotation, like that of the Moon, is very slow (about 10 minutes for each complete turn), but for director Blanche McIntyre it does at least solve the issue. What the available production pictures don’t show is the second, post-interval set (a flat in Paris), which is laid out far more in the usual style of Royal Exchange designs and beautifully cluttered with the accompaniments of well-to-do domesticity. But it, too, is destined to revolve, ever more rapidly, as the scene proceeds.
Elyot and Amanda, having discovered that they’ve been accidentally thrown together again after their short and tumultuous marriage and five years of divorce, resolve to have a second go. As their instinct for battle rises to the fore, the revolve increases its speed (and thunder emanates from the PA system) to the dizzying point of the fight scene.
The fight itself is hardly realistic, but the havoc it wreaks (including a collapsing grand piano) is spectacular. After that, the turntable has done its work: no more revolutions.
It’s all finely calculated, as are Coward’s lines. Their comic effect rarely fails, as the central four characters are experts at timing, and the construction of the play ensures things are always on the move anyway.
Having said that, there’s a kind of distancing going on - as each of the quartet is seen as a figure from the past, not as our contemporary. Elyot (Steve John Shepherd) is definitely an ageing roue; the “roue”, if not the ageing, is in the script – tired of life, cynical, possibly coercive, and supercilious. Amanda (Jill Halfpenny) is a woman trying to recreate her former allure, and even if we feel a little sympathy for her as the one who got knocked about (Elyot has a slow and pronounced “Ha, ha, ha” in response when she reminds him of it), she’s determined to needle him when she can. Sibyl (Shazia Nicholls) and Victor (Daniel Millar) both seem a bit too much larger than life, and Sara Lessore as Louise the maid has a spot of comic clowning for no other reason than to get a round of applause for her solo spot.
None of it is foreign to the play - as long as you don’t expect it to be anything other than brittle, clever, superficial and in the past. What this doesn’t do is to challenge the piece itself, as HER Productions’ version at Hope Mill Theatre did. That was equally entertaining and more thoughtful (as you can read here).
More info and tickets here
