Hilarious tale of lust and loathing
Private Lives by Noel Coward is on at Theatre Royal Bath and this rip roaring comedy still packs a punch.
A star studded cast comprising Nigel Havers as Elyot, Olivier award winning Patricia Hodge as Amanda, Natalie Walter as Sibyl and Dugald Bruce-lockhart as Victor make a fabulous foursome.
If you don’t know the play, it revolves around the ‘reconciliation’ of Amanda and Elyot - former partners who had an acrimonious divorce. I say ‘reconciliation’ in quote marks as they spend most of the play at each other’s throats to hilarious effect.
Elyot and Amanda, who were once married to each other, find themselves on honeymoon with their new partners, in the same hotel in the South of France and admiring the vista from adjoining balconies.
Their initial horror evaporates as, within no time at all, they’re sharing cocktails, cigarettes and a romantic serenade and rekindling their previous passion. Caring nothing for scandal, they elope to Amanda’s Paris flat where their lust thaws as quickly as it had reignited and they resume the slanging match which drove them apart in the first place.
The show is a dazzling comic masterpiece and is both a scintillatingly witty and a scathingly vitriolic study of the rich and reckless in love.
Hodge and Havers make a tremendous duo, both bringing in heaps of laughs to the packed house.
Walter and Bruce-lockhard both nail their parts and were a joy to watch.
The set and production was beautiful and spotless, really helping to transform us from Bath to the South of France and then to Paris.
If you have time go and see this show, you’re sure to not be disappointed.
For tickets go to: www.theatreroyal.org.uk/ event/private-lives.