What do you do with a comedy of
manners when manners have changed so drastically? It’s been over eight decades
since Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” opened in London , with Coward, Gertrude Lawrence,
Adrianne Allen and Laurence Olivier in the lead roles. Much has changed since
then: morals and mores, relationship between the sexes, the very nature of what
it means to be sophisticated and the fact that the closet door has been kicked
open. The answer to the question? Well, in the case of the current production
at Hartford Stage, you do the best you can and hope that the audience won’t see
the seams of this elegant period piece have frayed and its colors faded.
As directed by Darko Tresnjak, the
Stage’s artistic director, there’s still a certain life to the piece, but it’s
a flicker not a flame. The premise is simple: Elyot Chase (Ken Barnett) was
once married to Amanda (Rachel Pickup). They divorced, and now he has just
married Sybil (Jenni Barber) and Amanda has just married Victor (Henry Clarke).
The two new couples have, unbeknownst to each other, both chosen to celebrate
their honeymoons at the same hotel in France . In fact, their two terraces
abut. There are matching scenes early on filled with exposition and then the
eventual meeting of Elyot and Amanda. After a bit of tentative jousting and
some shared cocktails and cigarettes, the two realize that they are still madly
in love and, well, elope to Amanda’s flat in Paris , where they pick up their old ways,
which essentially means lovers’ quarrels leading to moments of passion leading
to fisticuffs and a gun battle. Such is the way of true love. They are tracked
down by Victor and Sybil, who have realized they are a matched pair – proof of
which comes in the final scene of the play when they verbally go at each other tooth
and claw only to tumble into passion.
Henry Clarke, Jenni Barber, Ken Barnett and Rachel Pickup
The audience the night I saw the
play was willing to go along with the set-up, but as the evening wore on (the
production runs for 90 minutes or so without an intermission) I sensed a withdrawal
(perhaps it was only my own reaction), for the interaction on the stage, albeit
with a period-perfect stage design by Alexander Dodge and elegant costumes by
Joshua Pearson, became more and more distant. It simply became very difficult
to buy into what was going on or to accept that this slightly misogynistic take
on marriage was in any way funny.
Coward wrote the role of Elyot for
himself, and Barnett gives us a nice take on the Coward style, which includes
being more than just a tad bitchy. In this rendering, that Pickup as Amanda, so
svelte and elegant, has ever found Elyot, a quintessential boy-man, attractive
is difficult to swallow, as is the fact that Elyot has chosen to marry the
simpering Sybil, or that Amanda has opted for Victor, played by Clarke as
something of a Monty Python caricature of a British twit. Perhaps these
characters, 80 years ago, seemed alive and engaging, but time has thinned them
down to cardboard, save for Amanda, for Pickup shows us how Katherine Hepburn
might have played the role (her cross from one terrace to another is elegance
personified).
As for the dialogue, well, it
relies more or less on the premise that anything said with a British accent
(forced or otherwise) is, by definition, witty. Actually, some of the banter is
semi-intelligible, as the actors bite off their words or, at times, substitute
mumble and grumble for enunciation. And then there are the dramatic gestures
that, often, seem to be a throw-back to the over-the-top visual evocations of
emotions familiar to silent movie aficionados.
Hartford Stage’s production of
“Private Lives” raises the question of the relevance of temporality as regards theater.
Why do we still respond to Antigone’s confrontation with Creon or Romeo’s
tragic love for Juliet? Perhaps because Sophocles and Shakespeare wrote not for
the moment but for eternity, dealt with that which makes us human rather than
that which makes us merely creatures of our times. Sybil, Elyot, Victor and
Amanda, as created by Coward, are like models we might see in a decades-old Vogue, dressed in period garb, striking affected
poses, offering up the ephemeral lifestyle of a world that no longer exists. We
can still learn something from Antigone’s battle with Creon and Romeo’s love
for Juliet – we can learn nothing from the two couples in “Private Lives.” Ah,
you might be saying, but it’s just a comedy. We’re not supposed to learn
anything from comedies. Really?
“Private Lives” runs through Feb.
8. For tickets or more information call 860-527-5151 or go to
www.hartfordtsage.org.
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