Review: HTC Production Of 'Private Lives' Bubbles Like A Gin Fizz

Noël Coward’s frothy mélange of the high life and acerbic wit is Hampton Theatre Company’s send off to summer at the Quogue Community House. A foursome of actors that have worked together well before—Rosemary Cline, Andrew Botsford, Matthew Conlon and Rebecca Edana—shine in one of Coward’s best plays, “Private Lives.” This is English satire at his best. Droll and brittle spouses—Ms. Cline and Mr. Botsford as the leads, Amanda and Elyot—go at each other with white-hot fury, no fangs recoiled, always ready to give as well as each gets. Not that they don’t love each other, oh, they do, but they just can’t help themselves finding the pinprick that becomes a stab wound that leads to one more bleeding fracas. It’s the flapper era of the ’30s when women characters were written imbued with strong mettle and pizazz, and Coward knew how to do that with relish.

Things start off with an improbable set up as the divorced Amanda and Elyot discover they are honeymooning five years after their divorce with their new spouses in adjoining hotel rooms in Deauville. Each has married a totally ordinary kind of person—Amanda is there with a pipe-smoking country squire Victor (Mr. Conlon), and Elyot has his ladylike English rose Sibyl (Ms. Edana). Paired as such, Amanda and Elyot are destined to have normal, peaceful lives with their new partners. But “normal” is what we know both Elyot and Amanda will find stultifying.

Before the wedding night is over and the new marriages (supposedly) consummated, Amanda and Elyot will find their flame still burns brightly, and they run off together to Paris, where Amanda conveniently has an apartment. The others will find out soon enough they have been jilted. End of Act One.

But Act Two reveals soon enough that life for Amanda and Elyot is less than bliss—passion is interruptus with the speed of a quick riposte. Fisticuffs sometimes follow as satire rolls into farce.

At some point, Elyot brings up that they are not living in sin according to the Catholic Church—since Catholics don’t recognize divorce, they are still married in the eyes of the church. Amanda points out they that they aren’t Catholic, but Elyot nonetheless notes, that “it’s nice to think they’d sort of back us up.”

In the general folderol of their conversation, the topic veers to numbers of liaisons after their divorce; Elyot makes a fuss over Amanda’s flippancy regarding hers. His affairs don’t matter, he says, because “I’m a man.” A second later he says, “It doesn’t suit women to be promiscuous.” She retorts: “It doesn’t suit men for women to be promiscuous.” Notably, Coward made Amanda’s last name “Prynne,” a surname shared with poor, shamed Hester of “The Scarlet Letter.”

Who can resist such wit? Not me. Ms. Cline and Mr. Botsford have handled tart dialogue before with the piquancy it demands, and here under the taut and swift direction of George A. Loizides, they do not let us down. Both gifted comic actors, they play extremely well against each other. Mr. Conlon and Ms. Edana are rather the fools out-to-lunch here, but before the end they will have their own opportunity to devolve into a well-suited match made by happenstance.

Diana Marbury makes a brief appearance as Amanda’s maid, muttering in French her disapproval of the whole affair. Teresa LeBrun has outfitted everyone in swanky period dress.

The difficulty the night I was there was hearing all the lines while sitting near the rear of the theater. Usually this is not a problem, but last Saturday too many one-liners sped by without enough volume to catch them. When I found a seat close to the front for the second and third acts—as did a few others for the same reason—the play took on a new life. And by the time you read this, I’d assume this has been fixed.

This naughty second scene—where both Amanda and Elyot, still married to others, canoodle in silk pajamas and never go out, even at night, was considered risqué in England by the standards of 1930, when the play was first produced there. Coward pled his case to the censor by acting it out himself, not a trial for him, as he had essentially written the role of Elyot for himself. The London three-month run Coward agreed to be in—he hated long theater runs—sold out in a week. His pal, the celebrated actress Gertrude Lawrence, was Amanda, and the role seems to have been written for her, since a record of their sparring even before the play opened is well recorded in the voluminous telegrams she sent him. When she first read the play, she wrote him: “there’s nothing wrong with it that can’t be fixed.” He telegraphed back that the only thing that was going to be “fixed” was her performance.

Since then as everyone knows, “Private Lives” has been done a zillion times, had Broadway revivals every so often with actors ranging from Tallulah Bankhead to Elizabeth Taylor, won several awards, been made into a successful movie, and been a mainstay of summer stock and regional theater. It’s no wonder. The writing’s too delicious to resist, strong, stringent roles are always in demand, and witty banter between men and women as equals is beloved with good reason by audiences the world over.

Don’t expect grand themes or deep questions plunged. The fun is in the writing, whether the lovers are cooing in cohesion or racing headlong into another spat. “Private Lives” may be slick and superficial, but who cares? It makes for an amusing night out.

Hampton Theatre Company’s production of “Private Lives runs through June 9 at the Quogue Community Hall with shows Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. An additional matinée will be offered on Saturday, June 8 at 2:30 p.m. HTC will be offering special dinner and theater packages in collaboration with the Westhampton, Southampton, Hampton Bays and Quogue libraries. Also offered in association with the Quogue Club at the Hallock House is a special lunch and theater package for the matinée on Saturday, June 8. For tickets visit hamptontheatre.org or contact the libraries about the dinner theater packages. Tickets are $30 for adults (less for seniors and students) and may also be purchased at OvationTix at 1-866-811-4111.

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