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In the midst of this brutally frozen winter, there is, at the Southampton Cultural Center, an island of warmth and wit and wonder which Michael Disher and his troupe of hugely talented actors have built as a richly hued escape from the elements.
This time, they’ve mounted an iridescent production of Noel Coward’s comedy of bad manners, “Private Lives,” the 1931 romp in the South of France and in a Paris apartment created for Gertrude Lawrence and Coward himself as an apology for his failure to star Ms. Lawrence in his 1927 operetta “Bittersweet.”
The work was written while Coward was on a voyage to the Far East, and its allusions creep into some of the bright and brittle dialogue between the two leading characters: “How was China?” “Very large.” “And Japan?” “Very small.” And—well, you get the music of it. And speaking of music, Mr. Coward not only starred in, directed and produced the original production of “Private Lives,” but composed its underscoring music, particularly “Someday I’ll Find You,” a song that has a relevance and effect upon Amanda, the Gertrude Lawrence character, an effect that she quickly tries to dismiss with a scoffing remark: “Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.”
There’s nothing that’s cheap or inelegant about “Private Lives,” and it goes without saying that sustaining this tale of two divorced people who can neither live without or with each other demands top-notch, charismatic acting. And the Southampton production has it. Both Logan Kingston as Amanda and Mark Anderson as Elyot have just the right touch and just the right apportionment of theatrical magic to keep this fragile-as-meringue tale constantly and fascinatingly afloat. The bon mots fly in the verbal badminton game that passes for conversation between the two, and yet, they emerge as two realized, dimensional people in pain and in joy, all at the same time.
It’s a delicious time trip to the 1930s, when we all gladly escaped to Hollywood’s screwball comedies, and the theater, where Mr. Coward held sway as the writer of smart, witty comedies in exotic locations featuring very wealthy, very smart, very tippling and very articulate world travelers, very much like Mr. Coward himself.
Everything is of an authentic piece in the Southampton production: In Paris, Louise, Amanda’s maid, dashes off and on in high Gallic approbation, and Agneiszka Patak realizes the role with foot stomping affirmation. Sybil and Victor, the two new spouses of Amanda and Elyot at the top of the show, who accompany their new bride and groom to the same hotel on the French Riviera for the first act, are played with great intelligence and gusto by Laura Ahrens and Michael Contino. Ms. Ahrens is particularly delicious in her expression of a wedding bouquet of intense emotions.
But the starring roles and most of the onstage time are reserved for Amanda and Elyot. They demand much in their roles, and, done as they should be, reward a like amount. Mark Anderson is a true reflection of Noel Coward—comfortable in his skin, ever ramrod straight and clever, mostly in control, and emotionally unable to do without Amanda. Mr. Anderson conveys this with comfortable ease, and he and Ms. Kingston possess the chemistry that makes this all not only deliriously delightful, but touchingly real.
Thank heaven Logan Kingston has come back to acting after a noticeable absence. Her re-creation of Amanda is poetry in motion. Smart, yes, and volatile, too, but beneath this, there’s a poignant vulnerability that she emits without words. Her constantly mobile face delivers entire stories. It’s a performance to treasure, and one that Coward would have embraced.
On a restless night during his Far East voyage, he switched off the light, and in his words, “Gertie appeared, in a white Molyneux dress on a terrace in the South of France, and refused to go away until four a.m., by which time ‘Private Lives,’ title and all, had constructed itself.” Logan Kingston appears in white, in the same unforgettable way.
Michael Disher as usual has not only directed the play at mach speed and in unimpeachable taste, but has matched his source with a set that commands elegance in every way. His terrace is mood perfect to accommodate what has been called the second greatest balcony scene ever written. And his suggestion of a Paris apartment is in the exquisite taste it calls for. Peter Eilenberg’s lighting and sound design are equally tasteful and enhancing, and Mr. Disher’s costume design says 1930s in every inch and stitch.
Of his original production of “Private Lives,” Mr. Coward noted in his diary, “… tenuous, thin and … delightfully daring, all of which connote 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.” The present production at the Southampton Cultural Center richly deserves the same fate—it’s unforgettable and shouldn’t be missed.
“Private Lives” concludes at the Southampton Cultural Center this Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights at 8 and Sunday at 2:30, as the first of the inexhaustible Mr. Disher’s “2010 Triple Play,” followed on succeeding weekends by “12 Angry Men” and “The Laramie Project.” The box office number is 287-4377 or visit reservations@southamptonculturalcenter.org.
on Jan 12, 2010