Callow, Coward, Cops

By Michael Feingold

The Village Voice  1st May  2002

(extract)

At that, it's better than Tim Hatley's sets for Private Lives, of which the first suggests a pseudo-Deco Marriott St. Tropez, while the second seemingly heralds the opening of a Prairie School studio in Paris. Howard Davies's production is full of similarly bold steps in wrong directions. Emma Fielding and Adam Godley, in the two supporting roles, have been given one note each to harp on. He's bearable, but her performance—the first time I've ever heard an English actress strive to affect an English accent—is a prolonged strenuous whine.

For Private Lives, though, these are all peripheral matters, easily waved away if the two leading actors can entangle us in the fun of watching Elyot and Amanda fall back into their traumatically bipolar relationship, and then hilariously claw their way out again. Davies, whose previous Broadway productions have ranged in quality from mediocrity to humiliating disaster, is near the high end of his dismal spectrum here. The pacing is sometimes languid to the point of somnambulism, and the spatting has had most of its fun removed. His notion of what Elyot should sing to Amanda during their romantic idyll is "If Love Were All," the wistful credo of a cabaret artist who's given up hope of settling down—maybe not the best choice for crooning to someone with whom you've just restarted an old love affair.

But even Davies's dull hand could be sloughed off with lead actors of sufficient sparkle, and here Private Lives scores in the 70 to 75 percent range, not bad as contemporary Coward revivals go. Lindsay Duncan, who can apparently do nothing false onstage, is always on the mark, whether Amanda's vulnerably perplexed, tart and brittle, or lying with wide-eyed ease. Alan Rickman, opposite her, can at least always appear to be equally true. If he doesn't always convince (watch his eyes when he declares his love in Act I), he compensates with a fuller sense of fun than Duncan, catching the role's many instant put-ons and riding them gleefully. The only trouble is that they're in different productions. Amanda and Elyot love each other, but they also can't stand each other; that's the central, fundamentally tragic, joke on which the action hinges. But Duncan's Amanda and Rickman's Elyot never add up to a couple: Nuzzling on a couch, they seem every bit as incompatible as when they're flinging pillows and lamps at each other. Whatever the explanation, the fizz is lacking. They might borrow some of Callow's excess, but it would probably evanesce on its way over from the Belasco.

 

Copyright VillageVoice2002