Paul Gross and Kim Cattrall in a scene from Private Lives
(Photo credit: Cylla von Tiedemann)
Probably the most produced Broadway comedy with six major revivals since 1969, the new Private Lives brings Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall back to the Great White Way for the first time in 25 years. The Noel Coward classic offers her a role not unlike her iconic Samantha Jones, hedonistic and sexually voracious, and she is perfectly cast.
Sir Richard Eyre’s British production, now also starring dapper Canadian leading man Paul Gross, best known for the television series, Due South and Slings and Arrows, is delicious fun, but not the perfect vintage champagne it should be. Although Cattrall and Gross are fine together as sparring partners, there is little sexual chemistry, a much needed element.
Coward’s 1930 romantic comedy is a classic quadrille, aside from the French maid who appears in the third act. Amanda and Elyot, rich and cultured, have been divorced five years after a tempestuous marriage in which they may or may not have struck each other. Now on their honeymoons with other people at a hotel in Deauville, France, they discover to their horror that they are in adjoining suites. Their passion flares up once again, and they let nature takes its course, eloping to Amanda’s apartment in Paris, with their spouses, Sybil and Victor, in hot pursuit.
Considered the finest British comedy since Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Private Lives is the height of sophistication and wit. Coward uses this framework to satirize love, marriage, passion, and English manners and pretensions. The characters use language to both seduce, spar and duel with each other. The dialogue includes some of the most priceless putdowns of any work written for the stage. Coward seems to say that we can’t live with or without the object of our desire, a rather cynical point of view for a light comedy.
Eyre uses a certain amount of low comedy to leaven the mix, which may not be what is necessary. Amanda first appears on the terrace wrapped in nothing but a towel, not a behavior one expects from a 1930’s socialite. In a fit of pique, Amanda sweeps all of the framed photos off of her grand piano, which seems out of character for a woman for whom nothing is allowed to be out of place, despite her messy relationships. Posing on a divan, Amanda falls on her behind, rather slapstick for such a sophisticated play. Performed in two acts rather than three, the second scene’s final curtain seems to be too long in coming and steps on Coward’s clever tableau.
The sexy and beautiful Cattrall is both charming and captivating as the heroine who doesn’t let convention stand in the way of her pleasures. In this, she is like her Samantha Jones character in Sex and the City, but here she is more aware of the conventions and social mores of the time period, and lets wit do more of the work for her perennial disdain. Gross is a suave, dashing leading man. However, he is somewhat hampered by the fact that Eyre has him reveal in the very first moments that he is already bored with his new wife, which doesn’t give him very far in which to develop his character. Another wrinkle in the fabric is that while Cattrall and Gross appear to be enjoying each other’s company enormously, their chemistry fails to send up any fireworks in a play about unbridled passion.
As foils for the leading characters, the actors playing Victor and Sybil have an unenviable job holding their own, but manage to do just that. Simon Paisley Day’s mustachioed Victor is all tweeds and pipe, with perfect posture, suggesting a British colonel on his day off. As Sybil, Anna Madeley’s constant need for reassurance suggests the clinging woman she will turn into several years down the road. Unfortunately, they don’t let us know why Amanda and Elyot chose them except as they are total opposites from their previous spouses. Caroline Lena Olsson has much fun with Louise, the disapproving maid who speaks nothing but French but gets her points across in the third act denouement.
While designer Rob Howell’s costumes are both glamorous and elegant, in his settings he seems to have made strange choices. His first act hotel terrace with its two story wall of wooden slats suggests the Caribbean rather than a French resort, and continues to carry the eyes up to the rafters. Amanda’s Paris apartment is in art moderne, a style appropriate to the thirties which followed art deco, with its chrome furniture and nautical theme. However, his oval room, high ceiling, and shiny pink and blue walls which reflect David Howe’s lighting are distracting, as well as the three fish tanks with real fish which are placed in the rear center stage directly behind most of the action. Eyre’s gimmicky use of the porthole window, another element of art moderne, is also a distraction from Coward’s witty comedy.
This latest Private Lives makes an excellent stage vehicle for Kim Cattrall and Paul Gross whom we have long admired on the small screen. Sir Richard Eyre’s production does not dig as deeply as his Broadway productions of Skylight or Amy’s View, but is a delightful entertainment nonetheless.
Privates Lives (through February 5)
Music Box Theatre, 239 W. 45th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or http://www.telecharge.com