Private Lives

There was no great passionate love scene in Therry Dramatic Society’s production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives, no leaving us with evidence of divorced couple of five years, Elyot and Amanda’s, great desire for each other.

In fact, there was not a spark of sexual attraction between Elyot and Amanda at all to leave the impression that their attraction to each other was too strong to ignore and hence required them to run off to Paris together in order to continue their perpetually stormy love/hate relationship. But, despite this, John Koch as Elyot and Dianne k Lang playing Amanda worked well together in delivering Coward’s fast paced witty one-liners.

Their good timing and clipped diction reflected their sophisticated English upper class characters. They threw themselves into a well-choreographed fight scene in Act 2 with such commitment that you wondered whether it was proper to laugh at this couple physically abusing each other.

Dianne k Lang was sleek and elegant, fun and racy, almost an English Wallis Simpson, graceful in movement and very polished. She embodied a woman with independent finances, able to make romantic choices without worrying about breaking the social taboos of the day.

John Koch’s Elyot was arrogant and worldly and relished the dryness of the text although he was not quite as polished as Lang.

Left high and dry in the warm summer evening in the dappled light of the hotel balcony are Sybil (Allison Scharber) and Victor (Brad Martin), Elyotand Amanda’sdumped new spouses. Scharber fired up quite well in a heated argument with Victor in the final act. Brad Martin was a suitably dull and respectable Victor.

Tamara Bennetts slotted into the cast effectively as Louise, Amanda’s long suffering French maid.

Amanda‘s Parisian apartment set was very simple… but it could have been anywhere… except Paris. 1930’s Parisian Art Deco was a great influence of the times and certainly would have been reflected in a Paris apartment owned by a wealthy, well-travelled woman like Amanda.

The costumes reflected the period and are well co-ordinated by Loriel Smart.

Director Barry Hill is obviously very comfortable with Noël Coward and has put together an enjoyable production that made the audience appear to forget the blustery, wet, winter weather for a laughter-filled couple of hours.

Sharon Malujlo

Images: Dianne k Lang (Amanda) and John Koch (Elyot). Photograph supplied by The Therry Dramatic Society.