Private Lives - Library Theatre - 11/09/07 by James Ellaby

One of the things that separates the world of theatre from that of TV or film is that dialogue has to be more important than action, or sometimes even plot. Of course, a large part of that is necessity, because you just can't do on a stage what you can do in a studio with cameras and digital trickery, but the upside of this is that the emphasis has to be on making the dialogue much more than just a vehicle to take the audience along the plot-line. It becomes the purpose of the plot.

Not many playwrights understood this as well as Noel Coward, and not many of his plays proved it more than Private Lives. The plot is wafer-thin at best, described by one critic when it was first performed in 1930 as: "hardly moving farther below the surface than a paper boat in a bathtub." The set-up is that two newly-married couples go to the same hotel for their honeymoons, unaware that their new relationships are about to be blown apart because two of them used to be married to each other. Of course, hilarity ensues.

But while the situation is certainly ripe for comic misunderstandings and hugely embarassing situations (how very British), it's Coward's dialogue that makes Private Lives work. Whether the characters are whispering sweet nothings to each other or hurling the most hurtful abuse at the top of their voices, it always crackles with electricity and razor-sharp wit. At the start, when the two couples are embarking upon their lives together, the way their separate dialogues mirror each other in quiet unease sets the scene for what will follow, but it is when former unhappy couple Amanda and Elyot first meet again that things really start to heat up.

However, while the opening act does have plenty of laughs, the real action only really gets going when they elope and return to Amanda's Paris apartment. As social outcasts in a time before divorce (or certainly their complicated situation) became commonplace and acceptable, they are pretty much confined to their quarters to live out their louche and stormy relationship. Frequently they flit between lovey-dovey dancing and romancing and near all-out warfare, with the passion they lacked in their new marriages pushed to boiling point with each other.

This is perfectly acted out by James Wallace and Phillipa Peak. It can't be easy to take up roles originally played by Coward and Gertie Lawrence (for whom the role was written) and since performed by the likes of Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, but Wallace and Peak are perfect, exuding decadence and vitriol, particularly while lounging around in the flat in their pyjamas. Philip Rahm and Isla Carter as the forsaken spouses are also very impressive in their important roles as the counterpoints to the snarling wit of the central couple.

Private Lives is a play very much of its time, but 87 years on, its dialogue has lost none of its ability to be both shocking and hilarious, often at the same time ("Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs."), while the convoluted relationships are actually fairly normal now, with the scenarios regularly enacted in soap operas and movies. Of course, those don't have Coward's writing to make them interesting, so it's important that excellent productions like this remind us just how good comedy-dramas really can be.