Private Lives review: a 'witty' revival of Noël Coward's classic comedy

Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers play the warring exes in this 'delicious retro treat'

Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers: 'a couple of consummate pros'
Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers: 'a couple of consummate pros'
(Image credit: Ambassadors Theatre)

It's only been about five months since the last London revival of Noël Coward's "sleek comedy" "Private Lives", said Clive Davis in The Times. By and large, the reviewers were "not convinced" by the Donmar's staging, which sought to "recalibrate" the play as a "meditation on domestic violence". This new version, arriving in the West End following a successful tour, takes a far more traditional approach, said Anya Ryan on Time Out. Nigel Havers and Patricia Hodge play the warring exes Elyot and Amanda, who meet again while on honeymoon with their new spouses, and both are superb. Christopher Luscombe's production "never quite digs into the fury hidden within Coward's humour", but it is a pleasure to watch, and "gets the laughs rolling in thick and fast". 

The whole thing is a "delicious retro treat", said Victoria Segal in The Sunday Times – the "theatrical equivalent of a prawn cocktail followed by crêpes suzette from the dessert trolley". But there is nothing anodyne or complacent about it. Havers and Hodge utterly convince as "two terminally bored people prepared to wreck everything just to feel something, jamming their hands into the psychosexual electricity sockets for the sparks" – and the evening is bathed in a feeling of "dyspeptic unease". 

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