A few days after hearing Stephen Sondheim deconstruct Noel Coward - and not in a good way - we were at the Old Vic seeing DESIGN FOR LIVING by the latter.
I had never seen the play before so was curious to finally get to see it, to say nothing of it balancing the year nicely having seen PRIVATE LIVES in February.

PRIVATE LIVES is a good reference point for the play as again it deals with lovers who can't live with each other but who also find it difficult to be apart. They are also potentially totally insufferable, Coward merely makes everyone they come into contact with cartoonishly boorish or silly. It helps having performers who can keep the shuttlecock of brittle comedy aloft and here the play is graced with three actors who, more or less, prove adept at this.As much as I enjoyed the production, the 2 hours 40 running time couldn't always keep momentum and there were noticeable longueurs in the first and second act, usually when it settled down to just two characters talking. Anthony Page's direction was as smooth as one would expect but it could have whipped along a little quicker in these scenes, the second act reunion of Gilda and Otto seemed to go on and on and on.

The love triangle between Gilda & Leo & Otto would appear to also include the chaps having had a relationship before they met her and Page ramps this up with hands held and a full-on snog. Not having seen the show before, I'm not sure how much is in the original stage directions although Coward certainly drops enough clues in the text.

Oddly enough the play, when produced initially in New York in 1933 with Coward, Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt, had no problems but in England the censor banned the play until 1939 with Rex Harrison playing Coward's role.

The mix-and-match lovers were led by Lisa Dillon's scintillating Gilda, effortlessly slinking around Lez Brotherston's sumptuous sets and displaying the maddening, quicksilver quality that Coward would surely have loved. The men didn't quite match her stylish turn but Andrew Scott showed a delightful comic touch as the temperamental playwright Leo - his sudden splenetic fits of rage were huge fun. Tom Burke however was only occasionally interesting.

Angus Wright's very tall and vocally ponderous 'straight man' to the trio of lovers literally over-tipped the balance of the scenes he was in - imagine The Addams Family's Lurch attempting high comedy. Maggie McCarthy, however, scored with each of her appearances as Leo and Gilda's maid in Act 2.All in all, it was an entertaining production of one of Coward's key plays.

Earlier this week Owen and I made a return to our London theatregoing when we went to the Vaudeville - again! - to see Richard Eyre's production of Noel Coward's PRIVATE LIVES.

From it's original production in 1930, the play has become one the most beloved comedies - by both audiences and actors! This time Kim Cattrall and Matthew Macfadyen are playing Amanda and Elyot, the lovers who can't live with each other - or without each other.Coward wrote the roles with himself and Gertrude Lawrence in mind and a flavour of these two individual performers haunt the teasing, darting repartee, the illusion being of a soapy bubble being kept floating in midair by the most delicate of touches.

Like THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST the reason for the play's longevity is that it just works - the effortless wit and frothy air hides the play's solid foundation within the classic three-act structure, no line superfluous, no action out of place. Remarkable then that when it first opened that it received mixed reviews at best from the London critics.

The glittering wit and sharp-as-knives barbs also conceal a fascinating central story of two people who are constantly aware that while they are ideally suited, yet they can't stop the arguments that regularly erupt between them. Life imitated art in the 1972 London revival when Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens' marriage crumbled away during the run and in a 1983 New York revival this love you-hate you aspect was more than played up with the casting of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, seven years after their second divorce. It was a box office hit even though as Frank Rich said in The New York Times "it had all the gaiety of a tax audit".Luckily you are in safe hands at the Vaudeville.

Richard Eyre brought his usual clarity of vision to the play - the first act slowly but surely gathering momentum until we too were swept up in the giddy excitement of Amanda and Elyot eloping to Paris. The second act is again paced carefully as we ride the rollercoaster that is the couple's determined efforts to stay in love and not fight until all Hell finally breaks loose.
His handling of the third act was interesting, not playing up the slapstick elements but again leading effortlessly up to the final famous image - Amanda and Elyot slipping away together again as Victor and Sibyl have a stand-up fight. Eyre makes sure that the bittersweet regret at the heart of the play is never far from the surface froth.

Eyre also has elicited interesting non-Coward performances from his two leads. Matthew Macfadyen still strikes me as an odd choice - he initially seems far too sturdy, too proletarian for Elyot and his understated performance sometimes throws the play's inner motor off but he does suggest the core of doubt under the witty banter and he made the fight scenes quite believable - this Elyot certainly makes you believe that he would "strike certain women, like gongs".
Kim Cattrall - who luckily did not receive the round of applause on her delayed entrance that I was dreading - also is hardly the brittle, angular and waspish Amanda of tradition. She possessed a worldly air that made you believe her distrust of convention and 'the done thing'. Her Amanda fully makes you understand how both Elyot and Victor would want this maddening, erratic woman as their own. I enjoyed her performance very much.

The hapless Sibyl and Victor - who by Coward's own admission are only there as skittles to be knocked down and put back up again are played by Lisa Dillon and Simon Paisley Day.

If Lisa Dillon didn't totally convince as Sibyl it's maybe because she is too intelligent a performer to fully convince as a prattling ninny. Simon Paisley Day followed up his scene-stealing role as brother Ed in last year's ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE with a delightful turn as the hopelessly out-of-his-league Victor. While hitting all the obviously comic moments with aplomb - the things he can do with a vowel sound - he also managed to suggest the sadness behind the buffoonery when he haltingly suggested that he would let Amanda divorce him to save any scandal - as if Amanda would mind!Rob Howell's designs were suitably lavish for Amanda's Paris flat and how the triple
-sphere upright goldfish tank stays in one place is beyond me.

I cannot recommend this production enough. It has the wit and panache one would hope but also the sadness behind the frivolity which can make a line like “Let’s be superficial and pity the poor philosophers, let’s blow trumpets and squeakers, and enjoy the party as much as we can, like very small, quite idiotic school-children” quite heartbreaking.

Well Constant Reader what can I say? I was so entertained by the two Noel Coward one-act plays that I booked for the last performance of the National Theatre's production of his comedy (and whopping star vehicle) PRESENT LAUGHTER.

Coward wrote the play in 1939 but it's premiere was cancelled as it was due to start the week war was declared and had to wait until 1942 before it was staged. Over the years it has been revived frequently with actors who lean towards the showy - O'Toole, Sinden, Callow, McKellen - and now it was the turn of Alex Jennings. After having been impressed with his performances in THE ASTONISHED HEART and STILL LIFE I was curious to see him in the blazing star role that Coward wrote for himself of Garry Essendine, an unashamedly self-centred West End leading man.

It's a very strange role, a character that it is difficult to like but very easy to enjoy as he shamelessly manipulates all around him. Essendine is always 'on', even in an empty room you suspect he would play to the mirrors and framed photographs. The two people whose eyes he cannot pull the wool over are his no-nonsense, seen-it-all secretary Monica and his ex-wife Liz, both of whom handle him with the resigned air of a parent with a sulky child.


The play opens with him once again having to declare undying love for yet another starstruck deb who has stayed the night just so he can get shot of her to prepare for an upcoming tour of Africa (of all places). News that his leading lady has pulled out means that he is saddled with the only available option: having to appear opposite Joanna, the predatory actress wife of his manager (who he knows is also having an affair with the manager's business partner).

The next night while alone at home, Joanna appears and after a quarrel where they both show their dislike for the other... yes you guessed... she stays the night. And she makes it plain she is *not* about to be given the heave-ho in the morning. If this wasn't enough, Garry is also having to fend off the stalkerish attentions of a young playwright whose avant-garde play he has turned down.

 

I suspect one's enjoyment of the play rests squarely on the lead actor and luckily Alex Jennings was excellent. He had the timing of death and the perfect style for Coward, seriously frivolous. He showed glimpses of the real Garry behind the theatrical posturing and outrageous damands, a man aware he is becoming his own creation.

There were fine performances too from Sarah Woodward as Monica the brusque secretary (although I have seen her play that sort of role before) and Sara Stewart as Liz his practical and knowing playwright ex-wife. The other performances were ok but were easily overshadowed. Lisa Dillon as the scheming Joanna had some good moments but could have done with shading the character more as Coward stacks the play fairly well against her.

A spectacular set by Tim Hatley filled the Lyttleton stage (see Owen's sneaked photo here) and Jenny Beavan's evocative costumes held the attention when Howard Davies direction seemed to simmer rather than percolate.