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Howard Davies's production of Private Lives
(Albery) is like a breath of dark, hot wind in a cool
drawing room. Coward's crisp staccato sparkle is
laced with the melancholy of experience. Former
husband and wife Amanda and Elyot (Lindsay
Duncan, Alan Rickman) are advanced sensualists,
highly trained and battle weary, who have settled, in
their second marriages, for tedious safety as the
price for having the upper hand. Amanda's new
husband, Victor (Adam Godley), is prim, prissy and
pompous: in moments of indignation, his face
resembles an outraged prune. Elyot's wife, Sybil
(Emma Fielding), is a picture of smug but tetchy
respectability: a canary masquerading as a storm
petrel. This is clearly going to be a no-win situation.
The point about Amanda and Elyot is that they know themselves and each other all too well. They are both demanding, highly strung, difficult adults, paired off with pert little adults spouting their needs. Middle age has got its foot in the door: your choices are narrowing, and all that experience has the drawback of producing fatigue. On the other hand, it's no good being sophisticated if you can't have anybody to be sophisticated with. The thing about calm after the storm is that you need the storm before the calm. The darker tone of the production brings out even more the elegance and subtlety of Coward's wit: the jokes sparkle against the murky background like fireworks. Duncan badly needs a proper period hairdo, but her Amanda, a sensual, thoughtful, imperious she-wolf, is a masterpiece of serious high comedy. Rickman plays a silky, world-weary tiger, a melancholy Caesar watching with appalled fascination as Cleopatra rolls out of the carpet. Oh God, will this be love? Again? This is, quite simply, one of the great Coward revivals.
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