Dave Porter‘Is there going to be an earthquake?’, asks new bride Sibyl of husband Elyot as they embark on married life together. ‘Quite possibly,’ he replies. There is, of course, but not quite in the way Sybil expected. The earthquake arrives when Elyot and Sybil – more by miracle than by chance – book themselves onto the same cruise liner as Elyot’s former wife Amanda and her new husband.
Noel Coward pours a lot into his dramatic soup and right from the start the ingredients are on display for a feast of drama: unrequited love, settling for second best in a relationship, choosing domesticity over passion, and just what is the correct attitude to adopt towards life. If the play feels dated, it can still be held up to the light through such universal themes.
With sharp direction by Blanche McIntyre and a set which continuously revolves – sometimes faster, sometimes slower – to give a distorting sense of time passing, the play reminds us that if we seek happiness in desire we will ultimately be disappointed. Jill Halfpenny (Waterloo Road, EastEnders) gives us an Amanda fatally attracted by past love Elyot and hoping that second time round they can recreate the passion which first brought them together, even at the cost of abandoning their respective partners. Halfpenny turns in a fiery performance as a woman determined to make her own choices, wrong or otherwise. When she launches herself at the beastly Elyot it is a moment of unalloyed drama.
But it is Steve John Shepherd – complete with bolt-on hairpiece – who steals the show with his louche portrayal of Elyot, all James Mason drawl and whispering cigarette smoke. He is maddening and is meant to be. His advice is to laugh at life and hope it doesn’t laugh back in your face – down with the moralists and up with irony because the alternative is too awful to contemplate. Elyot appears effete on the surface but Shepherd shows him to be full of bubbling molten lava inside, ready to explode at any minute. Quite a brilliant performance.
It all makes it very difficult for spurned spouses Shazia Nicholls as Sybil and Daniel Millar as Victor to make their mark. The final scene in which they confront Elyot and Amanda – and in turn vent their deflected spleen on each other – feels histrionic if necessary. This is due more to the clockwork plotting of Coward than to any actorly deficiency. When Elyot labels Victor a ‘gasbag’ it’s hard to disagree, but Millar lends him the right amount of wounded decency we can all empathise with. Nicholls pits her youth and naivety against the others’ jaded immorality and in doing so reveals Sibyl to be not simply a victim of infidelity but someone who can see it for what it is, human weakness.
Some of the attitudes in the play are antediluvian and come with a warning but there is no denying the power of this production. The one liners come fast and furious and Shepherd is fantastic as Elyot at delivering non-sequiturs which leave you wondering about his state of mind. As Coward shows, to live with someone is to relinquish your private life.
Private Lives is at The Royal Exchange Theatre from 27 March to 2 May 2026.
Steve Timms
Leslie James Kerwin
