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Rachael Stirling and Stephen Mangan
in Private Lives
at the Donmar Theatre April 2023
Photo by Marc Brenner

 

062 – Private Lives, by Noël Coward

Apr 26, 2023 | Podcast Episodes | 2 comments

The curtain rises on the terrace of a seaside hotel in France.  A pretty young woman, smartly dressed in travelling clothes, steps out onto the terrace. She leans on the balustrade and regards the view of the lights twinkling on the sea with an ecstatic expression. She is on the first night of her honeymoon.

This is the opening of what appears to be a classic romantic comedy set among the fashionable set in the 1930s. It is certainly very funny and stylish, but Noël Coward’s Private Lives might better be called an ‘unromantic comedy’. Within the cloak of its dazzling wit, it is in fact an excoriating portrait of love and marriage among the disaffected elite in the dying days of the Jazz Age.

Private Lives premiered at the newly built Phoenix Theatre in London in 1930, with Noël Coward himself playing the part of Elyot, alongside his favourite female partner, Gertie Lawrence, for whom he had written the role of his marital sparring partner Amanda. The production was a great success, both in London and on its transfer to Broadway, the critics admiring the play’s construction and sparkling wit, but predicting it would not last. One Broadway critic called it “an admirable piece of fluff.” But last it has, as approaching a century on, a new production at the Donmar Theatre in London, sees Rachael Stirling and Stephen Mangan in imperious form as the warring couple, both entertaining and challenging a modern audience. So why has Private Lives endured long after the world it is set in has disappeared. Is there more to this piece of fluff than high style and flippant wit?

To help me answer that question I am lucky to be joined in this discussion about the play by a Coward expert, Oliver Soden. Oliver is the author of a brand-new biography of Noël Coward, the first in nearly thirty years, which was published just last month.

You can listen to our review of Private Lives at the Donmar theatre here: 
The Play Review – Private Lives.

Oliver Soden

Oliver Soden is the author of Masquerade – The Lives of Noël Coward , the first new biography in nearly thirty years, published in March 2023 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. In its five-star review the Telegraph described the book as “truthful, sympathetic and thorough” – “this is the biography that Coward deserves.”

Oliver is also the author of a biography of the composer Michael Tippett, and of Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat, a semi-fictionalised biography of the cat who belonged to eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart, which was one of the TLS’s books of the year in 2020.

Oliver writes on art, music and literature for the national press, and is a frequent speaker and researcher on radio, including on Radio 3’s long-running programme Private Passions.

Recommended Play

Oliver recommended Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel.

Photo by Sarah Lee

Photo © Marc Brenner
We have footnotes for this episode …

The Footnotes to our episode on Noël Coward’s Private Lives include observations on what kind of love is on show in the play, on Sybil and Amanda as different kinds of women, and on the verbal precision of Coward’s language.

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2 Comments

  1. Paul Bradley

    Brilliant podcast. Shed so much light on the play. The day before I saw The Circle at The Orange Tree theatre- well worth seeing, excellent cast. In thought, seeing Private Lives. I thought that Private Lives owed a lot to that play.
    Today I saw The Motive and the Cue at the NT, which I hope you will see and review. It’s brilliant. Keep up your excellent work. PB

    Reply
    • Douglas Schatz

      Thank you for your kind feedback Paul.
      I’ve also seen The Circle and The Motive and the Cue. I enjoyed them both, and hope to record a review and/or an episode on them shortly.
      Thanks for listening.
      D

      Reply

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