★★★☆☆
Private Lives, almost irrespective of the people making it, is a hard show to mess up. With Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers starring in the latest production at the Ambassadors theatre, and with Christopher Luscombe on directing duty, it’s even harder. Looking down on Simon Higlett’s hotel balcony set before the show begins, it’s easy to imagine that most of the audience knows exactly what they’re in for.
For the most part, they’re absolutely right. Hodge and Havers are a recently divorced couple who find themselves honeymooning in the same hotel with their new spouses (Dugald Bruce-Lockhart and Natalie Walter). As they try (not very hard) to avoid bickering and/or falling back in love with each other, a classic British farce leaves them and their sweethearts feeling rather thoroughly miserable.
Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers star as Amanda and Elyot (photo: Tristram Kenton)
Having aged up the cast of Coward’s 1930 comedy quite considerably, Private Lives doesn’t quite have the pace of some more energetic productions, but with a pair of septuagenarian national treasures as the leads, there’s a sense that the show doesn’t need to. Luscombe’s direction tends towards softening the script’s edges – in the cast’s hands Coward’s dialogue is turned less into biting wit and more a gentle nibble.
Still, a gentle nibble can be a perfectly lovely thing, and there’s a cosy, comforting feeling around this production of Private Lives. Patricia Hodge is just as magnificently barbed and waspish as you’d hope as Amanda, delivering some of the play’s best lines and withering put-downs with an authentically old-school charm.
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Nigel Havers, meanwhile, delivers his lines with a sort of blunt musicality that never entirely matches up with the script, but (and I appreciate this sounds like damning with faint praise) he and the rest of the cast are clearly having a whale of a time. While in other shows that can prove completely insufferable, here it’s absolutely part of the charm.
There’s a simple joy to be had in watching a bunch of theatre veterans performing a ridiculously classical piece of British comedy. Like a seventies band cheerfully trotting out their greatest hits, there’s little to mark out Private Lives at the Ambassadors theatre as a must-see. But in the hunt for a chipper, perfectly nice revival of a stone-cold classic, Luscombe’s staging hits all the right notes.
Private Lives is playing at the Ambassadors theatre until 25 November. Get your tickets here.
