Noel Coward’s ‘Private Lives’ gets a fresh take in North Salem

Olivia Gilliat, foreground, plays a character with an on-again, off-again relationship with her ex-husband, played by Patrick Zeller in the Schoolhouse Theater’s production of Noel Coward’s ‘Private Lives’. COURTESY OF SCHOOLHOUSE THEATER

By DAVID POGUE

As dead playwrights go, Noël Coward is doing pretty well these days. Twelve of his plays have been made into movies, as recently as 2020 (“Blithe Spirit”). Several Coward plays are still routinely produced onstage, 53 years after his death — including, through Sept. 20, the Schoolhouse Theater’s production of “Private Lives” at the North Salem Community Center.

When you find out that Coward wrote this comedy in 1930, you might expect something musty and antique. Coward’s specialty was, after all, the drawing-room comedy: plays set in fancy living rooms, starring upper-class socialites who banter wittily about their romantic entanglements. 

And, yes, “Private Lives” is that. But it’s also a surprisingly daring tour of relationships with beautiful, volatile people that, if you’re unlucky, may look awfully familiar. 

The setup: Elyot and Amanda were once married. (He’s played by Patrick Zeller, with Jon Hamm looks and just the right amount of smug rich-guy boredom; she’s played by Olivia Gilliatt, who’s more dazzling the more unhinged Amanda becomes.) Their marriage was passionate and violent. Both parties, we learn, committed both infidelity and physical abuse. “We were like two violent acids bubbling about in a nasty little matrimonial bottle,” Amanda says. 

Awkward honeymoon

As the play begins, both have remarried — and, wouldn’t you know it, they’re now honeymooning at the same hotel, in adjacent rooms. We meet them where they meet each other: on their adjacent balconies. It’s a coincidence packed with comic potential. 

Plausibly enough, Elyot’s and Amanda’s new spouses are loyal, loving, and stable, even if they’re a little dull.

Amanda’s new husband, for example, is Victor (Zachary Clark, perfect as a human golden retriever), whom Elyot witheringly describes as “dumpy, and fair, and very considerate, with glasses.”

Elyot’s new wife, meanwhile, is the blonde, 23-year-old Sybil (Kate Day Magosci, finding laughs in a thin part). Victor and Sybil are, alas, written as little more than two-dimensional comic foils; poor Sybil, in particular, doesn’t get to do more than adore Elyot and cry a lot. 

Still in love?

It becomes quickly obvious that Elyot and Amanda miss their own fireworks. By Act II — spoiler alert — they’ve ditched their spouses and decamped to a Paris apartment for three days of wild abandon. (This may be a 99-seat theater, but kudos to set designer Hayden Bingham: In the break between Acts I and II, the side-by-side hotel terraces become a fully decorated Parisian apartment, complete with gramophone and grand piano.)

“This is too perfect to last,” Amanda says. She’s right. Soon enough, it’s just like the olden days: They’re bickering, pushing buttons, and exchanging barbs. “It’s a pity you didn’t have any more brandy. It might have made you a little less disagreeable,” Elyot says. “It doesn’t seem to have worked such wonders with you,” Amanda snaps back.

They make a valiant attempt to avoid falling into old patterns by agreeing on a safe word. (It’s “Solomon Isaacs” — some cultural reference that hasn’t withstood the test of time.) When either party utters it early in an argument, they both agree to two minutes of cool-down silence. But the safe word proves no match for Elyot and Amanda’s blistering heat, and before long, they’re slapping, biting, and choking each other, smashing records, and throwing props. (“Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs,” Elyot says at one point.)

Great casting

Then their spouses show up, and the wheels really come off.

Director Owen Thompson deftly manages the comings and goings of characters and the rising and falling of the play’s emotional rhythms. But his finest achievement here was the casting. All four of his main actors are terrific choices, complete with convincing British accents. 

Zeller and Gilliatt are particularly magnetic. They somehow win our sympathies despite behavior so immoral that, in 1930, the British Lord Chamberlain’s office nearly censored the play. Maybe it’s their self awareness. For all their awfulness, they fully recognize, with panic, that their rekindled romance is curdling back into toxicity. 

“Private Lives” creaks in a few places, but only a few. “Selfishness, cruelty, hatred, possessiveness, petty jealousy,” Amanda says during a calmer moment. “All those qualities came out in us just because we loved each other.” The play may be nearly 100 years old — but as this high-energy production makes clear, the tragic mechanics of gorgeous, disastrous relationships are timeless. 

David Pogue of Bedford Hills is an author, correspondent and contributor to The Recorder.