Havers and Hodge find love (and leg cramps)
Private Lives (on tour) Verdict: Vintage Coward ★★★★✩
‘WE LOST each other,’ says a wistful nigel havers’ elyot, looking out to sea over the Deauville hotel balcony on the first night of his second honeymoon, explaining to Sybil, his sweet, slightly shrill new squeeze, the collapse of his first marriage.
In noel Coward’s delicious comedy of appalling manners, the divorcés are soon to find one another. For first wife Amanda (Patricia hodge) just happens to be honeymooning with tweedy, decent Victor on the adjacent balcony.
The moment she hears him humming ‘their’ tune, ‘Someday I’ll find you, moonlight behind you,’ and spots him in her powder compact, these words come true. They realise that swapping fireworks and friction for cosiness and conventionality was a big mistake. hours later they have eloped, Amanda is smashing records over his head and they are breaking up, and making up, like the bad old days.
In casting a pair with a combined age of 145 years, director Christopher Luscombe neatly makes the point that love, lust and loathing can be ageless.
one of the biggest laughs comes when Amanda turns down elyot’s suggestion of some afternoon delight on the sofa as it is too soon after a heavy lunch and he gets up, tetchily, only to have an attack of leg cramp.
havers and hodge are perfectly in tune. She, fabulously sleek for a woman in her eighth decade, excels at sounding ‘jagged with sophistication’. he, superbly flippant, is every inch the fruity silver fox. I’ve seen more scintillating productions, but this one nicely nails what marriages are really made of.
■ The show is at Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury from Monday before continuing on tour. For dates visit ents24.com/ uk/tour-dates/private-lives.