The programme of the gloriously lavish new presentation of Private Lives claims that "the play is set in the 1930s". Actually, it was written by a peripatetic Noel Coward in 1929, and first performed in 1930. Like his male lead, Elyot, who has recently travelled all around the world, Coward was enjoying travel in the Far East, well away from the fabled flatness of Norfolk. The play occupies the same historical moment as Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, and shares with Waugh's novel an enchanted fascination with the brittle flippancies of the bright young things who loll around in silk pyjamas sipping expensive drinks. But while Vile Bodies incorporated plenty of unmissable satire - "last week's Prime Minister" and the like - Coward's play shows no satirical teeth whatsoever.
Most of us today don't want to encounter any uncomfortable satirical stabs, judging by the eager delight of the audience at the Albery Theatre, who applaud both of Tim Hatley's sets before a single line has been spoken, and often impede the elegant pace of Coward's dialogue with loud and over-prolonged laughter. It's a bit of a mystery to me why Coward's artificial froth is so hugely popular at the moment, but simple escapism must have a lot to do with it.
Today, the play feels like a classy period sitcom. It can be seen to have pioneered the now trite soap/sitcom conceit of a divorced couple who find themselves getting together again. "Some day I'll find you," murmurs that repeated phrase of "potent cheap music" heard by Elyot and Amanda on their French honeymoon hotel balcony. It is also sung by them as a faltering, sexually hung-over duet in Amanda's Paris flat in Act 2. The attempt either to find or to rediscover an elusive "you" who will solve or shelve all deeper problems is the comedy's bitter-sweet quest. The lives of its two couples are not so much "private" as socially decontextualised, perhaps reflecting Coward's own vagabond hedonism. No one has a job, or children, or apparently any expectation of or desire for such ties. The only parent mentioned, Sibyl's mother, is a remote, offstage bogey. The comedy celebrates a world of moneyed young people who enjoy easy access to both divorce and contraception, and who can shamelessly despatch a tired maid to make their coffee and tidy up the furniture they have smashed in their sexually charged fisticuffs (well choreographed by Terry King). Incidentally, the crudely farcical presentation of the French maid, Louise (Alex Belcourt), in an oversized Lyon's Corner House cap is a rare clumsy touch in Howard Davies's generally coherent production.
Each of the principal characters hopes to "find" the unquestioning adoration of a marriage partner to give value to an otherwise vacuous existence. But none of them, except for Sibyl at her "big moment" near the end, is willing to acknowledge any reciprocal obligation to be faithful, loving or generous. Such moral shallowness could be alienating, but Alan Rickman brings an un-Cowardlike gravitas to Elyot that hugely strengthens the comedy. At times, it seems almost as if, like his contemporary and near-namesake T S Eliot (his "Ash Wednesday" was published in 1930), the man has a tormented and self-critical inner life. Rickman is beautifully complemented by the elegant Lindsay Duncan as Amanda, combining feisty intelligence with flawless comic timing. Her cool assumption of the role of society hostess in Act 3 is particularly brilliant, and she sports her fashionable hat at breakfast time as if to the manor born.
Coward admitted that he didn't give the other characters, Victor and Sibyl, much of a chance - they were just "a couple of extra puppets thrown in to assist the plot", even though Laurence Olivier was to play Victor. But Adam Godley and Emma Fielding bring a gawky innocence to these roles, and it is with some dismay that we see, at the play's close, that these innocents have learnt to mimic the savage sparring of the more experienced couple. But the curtain falls: it was only ever a silly, shallow comedy, and perhaps that's why, for all its heartlessness, it is strangely comforting.
Private Lives is at the Albery Theatre, London WC2 (020 7369 1730), until 6 January 2002
