Private Lives, Program Notes
"He's as clever as a bag of ferrets, driven as a perch of canaries."
--Virginia Woolf on Noel Coward
Edward Albee in his introduction to Three Plays by Noel Coward writes: “…If for some reason—like you’re so young you’ve learned to read only this year, or you’ve been locked up without books since the twenties—you’ve never read Mr. Coward’s plays, try it. You’re in for quite a treat…you will, without question, be reminded of the three qualities possessed by all plays of any matter—literary excellence, dramatic sure-footedness, and pertinence. Mr. Coward writes dialogue as well as any man going; it is seemingly effortless, surprising in the most wonderfully surprising places, and true—very, very true… “
Noel Coward records that “Private Lives was conceived in Tokyo, written in Shanghai, and produced in London, (where) it was described in the papers variously, as being, ‘tenuous,’ ‘thin,’ ‘brittle,’ ‘gossamer,’ ‘Iridescent,’ and ‘delightfully daring.’ All of which connoted, to the public mind, ‘cocktails’ ‘evening dress,’ ‘repartee,’ and irreverent allusions to copulation, thereby causing a gratifying number of respectable people to queue up at the box office.” Allegedly completed in only four days, while the author was convalescing from influenza, it is Coward's most enduringly successful work, regarded as the high point of his artistic and commercial career. He starred in it in London and on Broadway alongside Gertrude Lawrence, for whom he created the role of Amanda. When he sent her the manuscript, Lawrence wired back, "Nothing here that can't be fixed." Coward telegrammed, "The only thing to be fixed will be your performance." From there they started rehearsals at her villa in (suitably enough) the south of France. In his preface to his collected plays Coward writes: “Private Lives…taken all in all, was more tricky and full of pitfalls than anything I have ever attempted as an actor. But fortunately for me, I had the inestimable advantage of playing it with Gertude Lawrence, and so three quarters of the battle was won before the curtain went up.”
A comedy of bad manners, Private Lives first produced in 1930. turned all the cumbersome proprieties of the traditional English drawing-room drama upside down. Elyot and Amanda are among the first enduring sightings on the English-speaking stage of what might be called "the modern”. Their passion will out, and will prove to be dangerous and humiliating—an excellent antidote to the brittle façade gossamer sophistication required. “Were we really happy in the twenties?” Coward writes, “On the whole I think most of us were, but we tried to hide it by appearing to be as blasé, world-weary and ‘jagged with sophistication’ as we possibly could. Naturally we had a lot of fun in the process.”
Noel Coward came into this world on the 16th of December 1899, with plenty of time for Christmas--which explains his name. He was therefore two weeks older and wiser than the 20th century.
“Gorgeous, dazzling, fantastically funny.”—New York Times
