Private Lives by Noel Coward, Vaudeville Theatre, 26-Feb-2010 – Directed by Richard Eyre

It was with a creeping sense of dread that I anticipated Kim Cattrall's entrance and the inevitable brainless Broadway-inspired “Applause for the Star” that would interrupt the action. When this didn't happen I was in such a good mood that I started enjoying myself and almost failed to find any fault with this production. I'm not saying that the applause won't happen on other occasions I was just happy that it didn't happen on my watch. I might be wrong but I like actors to earn applause

Actually Kim Cattrall as Amanda, definitely earned applause and although the accent slipped on the odd vowel, she was pretty brilliant. She was relaxed, assured and with the exception of her first entrance in a towel and later in the scene swinging an agile naked leg over a chair back, she didn't seem to be trying to cash in on any Sex in the City (or even Porky's) notoriety.

Matthew MacFadyen as Elyot was also good and I couldn't help feeling echoes of Noel Coward in his performance. It was not an impersonation, which could well have been ghastly and the performance was nowhere near as mannered as Coward might have been. There was something more than the actor's tallness and enlarging forehead that seemed in a way, for me, to conjure the author.

Although there is a great deal of good chemistry between Cattrall and MacFadyen there was part of me that thought they each needed a more suitable sparring partner. I'm not going to admit that I thought of this in terms of age at the time, I was sitting far enough back not to be able to see any age difference. I think the slight mismatch (and it is slight if not entirely imagined by me) may be more about acting styles not quite coming together.

There is excellent support from Lisa Dillon and Simon Paisley Day as the abandoned spouses. Day also mangled his vowels but for comic effect and oddly seemed to be suffering from some kind of shell-shock towards the end of the last act. It sort of fitted his character and age but it was rather sudden.

I'd like to finish by mentioning the Paris apartment set which is circular and furnished with low circular or curved divans, the requisite grand piano and a most excellent fish tank consisting of three interconnected globes.

Private Lives by Noel Coward, Hampsted Theatre, 26-Jan_2009 - Directed by Lucy Bailey

The worry I always have with Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde's plays is that an idiot director might decide to delve too into whichever play they are doing, in an attempt to unearth a non-existent dark-side to the piece. I have seen this done and it has never been pretty. I'm not going to deny that there are deeper messages or meanings in the plays of these dramatists but I don't think they work properly unless they are played at the surface and kept apparently frivolous.
Fortunately Lucy Bailey allowed the audience plenty of laughter as well as some moments when I had to dab a little moisture from my eye.
I was not sure that Jasper Britton's Elyot and Claire Price's Amanda had sufficiently upper crust accents but it probably would have made them sound like bad, stereotypical Noel Coward impressions. Although I missed the clipped and rather frosty delivery that I normally would have wanted, instead I got something that felt more realistic and thought I could feel the love between Elyot and Amanda more.
A major departure from other productions that I seen was Amanda's Paris flat. Normally this is a chic abode with Bedroom, bathroom and kitchen leading off from the the living room where all the second half's action takes place. In this production it was a studio flat in a slope-roofed attic. The kitchen was hardly divided from the main area, causing some awkwardness as the maid (Jules Melvin)had to be seen to be doing something when she was there. The bathroom looked too small to actually have a bath in it and the only other room (where Elyot retires) was a box room or walk-in cupboard. The main area consisted of a grand piano and a bed. This arrangement had a certain logic to it but it did seem to present a few minor problems for actors who would normally have been hidden from view.
I didn't find myself having any sympathy for the characters of Sibyl and Victor and I don't suppose I was meant to, although I have felt a bit sorry for them in other productions.

The Vortex by Noel Coward, Richmond Theatre, 4-Feb-2008, Directed by Peter Hall

So you’ve got this character called Florence Lancaster, she is an ageing actress, afraid of her age and needing desperately to be loved. The problem is that she’s played by Felicity Kendal who, it is widely accepted, is charming and lovely and it’s probably a criminal offence not to like her. All this means that how ever well she manages to convince you that she’s Florence Lancaster (and she is both very convincing and good at it) there’s always this voice at the back of your head (okay my head) that says “but that’s Felicity Kendal – we like Felicity Kendal”. As I’ve said it’s largely in my head and almost certainly doesn’t detract from her performance.

I wasn’t entirely sure about Dan Stevens who played Florence’s son Nicky. He was certainly pretty and vulnerable enough and I wouldn’t complain about his acting but I thought some of the easy-to-parody Coward witticisms (brittle brilliant wit with something nasty ready to break out when thing crack up) weren’t delivered well enough. I could imagine that it might have been that fear of slipping into parody that stopped him from taking pleasure in the language and from saying beautiful things beautifully. Another thing that bothered me was that he seemed to change enormously between the first and second acts. I realise that he is supposed to be reaching a crisis about his drug taking and his relationship with his fiancée is breaking down but in the play it’s only two days later and things don’t start to go wrong until act two.

For some reason this three act play with short peppy acts had two intervals lasting a total of 45 minutes out of the two and a quarter hour running time. I might be argued that the 20 and 25 minute gaps were necessary to move the set but the set had a monumental simplicity about it with free standing doorways and staircases set against long black curtains and with only enough furniture to be useful in the scene. Perhaps we were expected to spend the intervals drinking cocktails and having witty, sophisticated conversations.

I seemed to have missed the mildly suggested lesbian sub-plot in the play when I saw it at the Donmar in 2002 but even here it was gentle and entirely one-sided. Also I realise that people have compared the play’s mother son relationship with the same relationship in Hamlet, but I kept being reminded of the Seagull which I saw Felicity Kendal in a decade ago. It is slightly odd to think that the Seagull was only about 30 years old when Coward wrote this play.

I would also like to mention Mah-Jong which people play off stage during the second act. It is not the tile-matching excrescence that which might be called Mah-Jong on your computer but a game, using the same 144 tiles, which is a cross between Gin Rummy played with three packs of cards and Lego. It is a wonderful game and I encourage you to learn it because it will increase the chances of me finding three other people to play it.