Washington Post - Recommended
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The Washington Post
Theater & Dance
‘Private Lives’: Old flames reignite in smart Lansburgh revival of Coward’s comedy
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James Waterston as Elyot and Bianca Amato as Amanda in the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Noël Coward’s “Private Lives,” directed by Maria Aitken. (Scott Suchman)
BY PETER MARKS June 12
That breeze wafting through the Lansburgh Theatre is the air of soigne craftsmanship, borne on the currents of director Maria Aitken’s suavely attired revival of Noel Coward’s evergreen comedy, “Private Lives.”
She has guided an appealing quintet of actors — and especially, Bianca Amato and James Waterston — through a textbook production of Coward’s droll, three-act entertainment, concerning a sophisticated pair whose idea of love survives on a scalding dose of the opposite.
The sexual charge that’s sustained on attraction compounded by antipathy is a theme for romantic comedy as old as “Much Ado’s” Benedick and Beatrice. Coward’s Amanda and Elyot — who derive less pleasure from the touch of each other’s skin, than from getting under it — are themselves the template for a passel of subsequent film, stage and television couples who’ve found making up even more arousing than making out.
Aitken, who shepherded Broadway’s spoof of Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps” to much acclaim, is on far firmer ground with “Private Lives” than she was for her last venture for the Shakespeare Theatre Company: a tortured, Hollywood-celebrating “As You Like It” in 2009 that got lost in its own overreaching conceits. Her handling of “Private Lives” underlines rather than undermines the supple, comic strength of the text.
Don’t let “three acts” intimidate you: The play careens merrily, and fleetly, through the brittle skirmishes that ensue after Amato’s Amanda and Waterston’s Elyot, five years miserably divorced, wind up in adjoining hotel suites in the south of France with their far less appealing new spouses. The sleek Amanda finds herself saddled with stick-in-the-mud Victor (Jeremy Webb), and dapper Elyot has settled for a clingy crybaby, Sybil (Autumn Hurlbert).
This Victor and Sybil are just vanilla enough for us to see why they’d soon prove unsavory to cravers of passion fruit like Amanda and Elyot. Still nursing the wounds from their own marriage, they’ve picked Victor and Sybil, it seems, just to give themselves a breather.
On Allen Moyer’s elegant set of twin balconies, the classic “Private Lives” environment, we begin to see that this Amanda and Elyot are not so much besotted with as addicted to each other. Amato and Waterston radiate a youthful vigor: This is a couple, we’re made to feel, with their best years ahead of them, giving us all the more reason to hope that ultimately, they’ll realize they’re meant to spend that time with each other.
Waterston’s Elyot is molded in the Coward style: There’s a wisp of the feminine in a voice pitched higher, and in a manner a bit more effete, than you expect from his manly demeanor. Concurrently, a flicker of masculine assertiveness is revealed in Amato’s Amanda, who gives as good as she gets. Their sparring begins as banter and escalates to boxing: Elyot gives Amanda a slap; Amanda breaks a record over Elyot’s head. (Remember, the play was written in 1930.)
The first act — in which they rediscover their fever for each other in the moments after they learn they’re otherwise spoken for — is more sharply satisfying than the second act, when in being in each other’s arms (in Amanda’s Paris flat) they rediscover that their union thrives on friction. What’s most fun here is the joy the two actors are able to convey, that on the domestic front, war can be a ball.
Best of all is Act 3, when Webb and Hurlbert are back, for a chain reaction of comic, head-on collisions. That most civilized of customs, the serving of morning coffee — here provided by Amanda’s snarly maid (Jane Ridley) — threatens to turn into a food fight. In Amanda’s being compelled to play hostess and serve Elyot, one gets the feeling, thanks to Amato’s withering gaze, that she’d rather be pouring hemlock."
DC Theater Arts - Recommended
"...Yet, although I tried mightily to engage this production, to care about its characters and their issues, I found myself struggling to embrace their stylish manners, their spoiled behavior and petty concerns, and their outlandishly predictable predicament."
MetroWeekly - Recommended
"...Whether you look for the deeper resonances or not, it’s a tightly sprung and pleasurable production. Amato steals the day with her larger-than-life but highly expressive Amanda and Autumn Hurlbert is not far behind with a very funny and perfectly pitched Sibyl. The men hold their own, but with perhaps more bluster than flair. James Waterston is an attractive Elyot, but he is tad more adolescent than rakish and thus seems too somehow too crude an instrument for Amanda. He is also the least comfortable with the accent and it occasionally dampens the breezy delivery Coward requires. Also, without more chemistry, the swoons between Amanda and Elyot come over as a little too saccharine for a play of such gratifying cynicism."
Talkin Broadway - Highly Recommended
"...These actors have inhabited their roles long enough that their chemistry seems effortless—an effect that takes enormous work to achieve. The way Amato shifts from elegantly reserved to almost feral is so much fun to watch, and Waterston plays Elyot as a man trying to maintain his dignity while sliding into sloppy emotional outbursts. Webb and Hurlbert also demonstrate how Victor and Sibyl crumble (humorously) through their mistreatment. Jane Ridley, who was not in the Huntington production, finds every laugh as the French maid Louise."
Washington City Paper - Somewhat Recommended
"...The presence of stars has generally been thought necessary because there's not much to the play besides a situation: Acrimoniously divorced Amanda and Elyot have arrived at a seaside hotel, each honeymooning with a brand new spouse, only to find they've been booked into adjacent suites with connected balconies. Awkwardness and cocktail-sipping ensues. For three acts. Still, there's fun to be had in their belatedly discovering what the audience guesses immediately: that they should never have parted."
Washingtonian - Highly Recommended
"...Private Lives is a difficult play to do well and an easy one to ruin. An ill-matched cast or heavy-handed director can drain the piece of its fizz and leave it flopping on the stage like a just-caught trout. Actress-turned-director (and Royal Shakespeare Company veteran) Maria Aitken has done a creditable job of staging this classic, and that is not to damn with faint praise. It means that she and her uniformly crackerjack cast get the anti-romantic, love-is-ridiculous, isn’t-it-nice-to-be-rich, isn’t-respectability-boring vibe of Coward’s 1930 hit, and they run with it. It takes a while for the effervescence to get bubbling, though, and some physical aspects of the production look a little drab by lavish Shakespeare Theatre standards. (This is a remount of a 2012 production from the Huntington Theatre in Boston). But once Private Lives finally breaks out of the gate, about ten minutes in, it’s a festival of glibness, glamour, and bad behavior."
Washington Blade - Highly Recommended
"...Aitken's handling of Coward's witty paean to fiery but not sensible love is top notch. It's the perfect introduction to this Coward gem, and a wonderful refresher for those who haven't been there in a while."
MD Theatre Guide - Highly Recommended
"...This Private Lives works because its director and cast is so well-versed in the material, steeped in it you might say, like an olive in one of their martini glasses. Director Maria Aitkin in fact has the distinction of starring in more Coward roles than any other living actor."
DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended
If anything, Private Lives’ three acts mimic the crests and troughs of a love affair beautifully. At one end of the spectrum there’s romance and passionate embraces – basically, the part we all like to remember.
But at the other end, of course, there are moments of boredom, insecurity and uncertainness, followed by an explosion of emotion and an unfortunate falling out.
