"Private Lives" = private hell?

Producers, actors and audiences cannot seem to resist Noël Coward's "Private Lives." Currently receiving a spirited production at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls, N.Y., through September 20, the play has been produced on Broadway eight times, including its 1931 premiere, and is supposedly scheduled for a ninth production in the 2026-27 season. 

There has rarely been a more perfectly-constructed comedy: Act I - a divorced couple (Elyot and Amanda) run into each other while on honeymoon in the beach resort of Deauville, France, with their current spouses (Sybil and Victor). Act II - the divorced couple realize they're still mad about each other and run away together to Paris. Act III - the jilted spouses show up in Paris as the divorced couple fight like jungle cats.

The original London production saw Coward as Elyot, Gertrude Lawrence as Amanda and Laurence Olivier as Victor. In 1969, I saw Brian Bedford and Tammy Grimes' effervescent performances as Elyot and Amanda on Broadway.

Coward displayed his multiple talents as actor, playwright and songwriter in this work, since his lovely "Someday I'll Find You" is heard throughout in the background.   

Director Owen Thompson has a fine cast for this 95-year-old classic: Patrick Zeller as Elyot (last seen as the slimy Valmont in "Les Liaisons Dangereuses"), Olivia Gilliatt as Amanda, Zachary Clark as Victor, Kate Day Magocsi as Sybil (also seen in "Liaisons") and Abby Malczon as an exasperated maid, Louise. 

In "Private Lives," the scenic design (by Hayden Bingham) and lighting design (Dennis Parichy) are almost players in the action. Act I takes place on neighboring hotel room balconies as one couple, then the other, emerges to sigh over the seaside view and the Duke of Westminster's yacht out on the water. 

Patrick Zeller as Elyot and Olivia Gilliatt as
 Amanda on that fateful hotel balcony in Deauville.
  Photo:Doug Abdelnour 

From the get-go, however, Coward buries little flies in the blissful ointment. Elyot's Sibyl and Amanda's Victor harp on their partners' first marriages and honeymoons. ("She was pretty, wasn't she? ... Prettier than I am?" "Do you love me more than you loved Elyot?")

Of course, Coward stacks the deck with the new spouses. Sybil's volcanic hysterics (courtesy of Magocsi) and Victor's prim mustache, bit of a tummy and puzzled expression (from the skilled Clark) are no match for Elyot and Amanda's effortless glamor.

Early, the play title appears with, again, some foreboding as Amanda tells Victor, "I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives ... That was the trouble with Elyot and me; we were like two violent acids bubbling about in a nasty little matrimonial bottle."

The bottle quickly becomes those adjoining rooms. Horrified at seeing each other on the balconies, Elyot and Amanda tell their new spouses that they must leave immediately. Sybil and Victor, quite properly, refuse and storm downstairs, each to dine alone, leaving Elyot and Amanda in the danger zone. The "damned moonlight," in Elyot's words, the string orchestra down on the patio and the sea air prompt a renewal of romance and the two swear "never to quarrel again."  

Zachary Clark as Victor and Kate Day Magocsi
as Sybil. Photo/Doug Abdelnour

This resolve, of course, is tested as the two flee to Amanda's Paris apartment and, basically, stay in bed for three days. All we see, naturally, is the living room, where the two explore a mountain range of emotions, from "You're the most thrilling, exciting woman that was ever born" to "You spiteful little beast!"

This is the crux of the play that's fascinated audiences for decades: two beautiful people irresistibly attracted by love and, at the same time, so terrified of vulnerability that they have to lash out at each other. 

The battle gets physical as Elyot slaps Amanda and she breaks a record over his head, among the fights that travel around the room. (The credit in the program that really seems to encapsulate the love-hate dynamic is Dan O'Driscoll as Fight and Intimacy Director.)

Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence in
"Private Lives"

Watching sophisticated people behave badly is often a joy, but such apparently-witty lines as "Some women should be struck regularly, like gongs," land rather differently today.

Director Thompson's notes in the program allude to this: "Our task has been not to apologize for [the play], tame it, or force it to conform neatly to the expectations of 2026, but rather to listen closely enough that it may live as fully today as when it was originally presented."

It would be a mistake to think the playwright is expressing his opinion through the "gong" line (that I'll bet was considered outrageous in 1931.)

Brian Bedford and Tammy
Grimes in "Private Lives"

Elyot and Amanda love the sound of their own voices, tossing off such lines as Elyot's  "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 schoolchildren."

What Coward is commenting upon is their vacuous lives. The four main characters seem to have plenty of money to go on honeymoons in France and travel the world without any visible means of support. They are free, then, in their Gatsbyesque carelessness, to indulge themselves in behavior that might, in other hands, draw the police. Forty years later, Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" took those four couples, put them in a university setting and ripped off the witty glamor.

But it is meant to be a comedy and Coward doesn't let us down. After Victor and Sybil surprise the lovers in the Paris apartment, the four of them sit down for a deliciously-awkward morning coffee service and the two spare spouses eventually discover that bad behavior isn't limited to beautiful people.

As Amanda, Gilliatt possesses a glowing energy, expressing her character's wildness in a wonderful mad dance with a shawl in Act II. Zeller plays Elyot with a world weariness that is only discarded when he is overcome with his feelings for Amanda. Magocsi's achievement is to make one feel sorry for Sybil and want to strangle her at the same time. Clark plays Victor as the only sane person in the room but unfortunately, he's engaged in a battle of wits without a weapon. Malczon makes the most of Louise's jaundiced view of these mad les Anglais. 

Opening night was a bit tricky, with apparent issues concerning the set walls, and the cast seemed to be feeling its way through the fast, rapid-fire dialogue. With two weekends to go, "Private Lives" will be ticking along like a well-oiled comedy machine.