After her appearance last spring as Judith in "Hay Fever", it seemed only natural that award-winning actress Paula Plum would be playing Amanda, a role created for Gertrude Laurence, in the Lyric Stage's 30th anniversary season production of Noel Coward's "Private Lives". It was not so obvious that Shakespeare & Co.s Michael Hammond would be so perfect opposite her as Elyot, a role Coward wrote for himself. Hammond was last seen as the philosopher Wittgenstein in "The Fly Bottle" out in Lenox. His intense wittiness is completely apt, however.
Versatile Barlow Adamson tackles the part of Victor which brought Laurence Olivier to prominence on the West End. His old boy is a perfect foil for Hammond's worldweary characterization, even if we don't quite believe Amanda could really have married him.Mandy Fox's Sybil, played with consumate skill, doesn't quite fit the ensemble, which is as much a problem of the script as this actresses choices for the role. Coward himself suggested these two were just puppets, but actors have managed to bring them to life over and over again. The joke works best when Sybil has more of an echo of Amanda, and Victor is impressive in his own right. However, Scott Edmiston, who helmed "Hay Fever" at the Huntington, does a predictably excellent job putting the quartet of mismatched lovers through their paces. It's unlikely there'll be a better or more attractive version of this classic around here any time soon.
What makes this farce so enduring is made quite clear in this production. First of all, it's not particularly British, being set "on the continent" after all. Even though three of the four roles were originally tuned to actors well versed in the light comic traditions of their day, Coward, building on practiced archetypes, was able to conceal a great deal of angst just beneath his ingenious humor. In contemporary theatre, which is more willing to mix styles at the drop of a croissant, such undercurrents have rescued his work from the community theatre ghetto.
The source of the mixed metaphor above, for example, is a brief bit of business during Amanda's rather tense attempt to serve coffee during Act III of this production. Still fuming at Elyot after their pitched battle the night before, but putting up a sophisticated front before her present husband and Elyot's new wife, Plum flips a plateful of pastries into his lap, whereupon they bounce onto the carpet. Hammond casually gets down on all fours and rescues one with his mouth like a dog biscuit, turns fully around on the floor and bounces back onto the couch. The audience howled, Victor and Sybil looked dumbfounded, and Amanda was taken aback. All these polite goings on were of course being observed by Louise, Amanda's french maid, played by Lyric staffer, Amy B. Corral, with Gallic frustration and a bad cold. On one level, merely good rep farce, on the other, a kind of comic desperation, the sort which bore fruit two years later in Coward's "Design for Living." For as the author put it, "I think very few people are completely normal really; deep down in their private lives.''
Production values at the Lyric are usually more than satisfactory, but the designing women, as this trio has become known, have out done themselves this time. Janie Howland's set, constructed by VDA, uses Art Deco abstraction to create a whole artificial world for the piece, complete with a tres moderne rug. Gail Astrid Buckley has given Plum dresses which together with a rather startling red bobbed wig make her a force of artifice. Fox's more realistic traveling suit and pink evening concoction leave no doubt as to her fate. And Karen Perlow's lighting handles the three-quarter space admirably as usual, with the right air of moonlight and twinkling stars for Act I. The necessary music, cheap but potent, is of course Coward's own, both during and between scenes.
It can be argued that next to Bernard Shaw, Noel Coward was the most important playwright on the English stage in the first half of the century. Certainly, his freewheeling approach liberated the drawing room farce from the last vestiges of 19th century propriety. He also set a standard for dialogue style and implied direction which resonates to this day. But Coward also managed to retain the insolent charm and romantic sympathies of British comedy going back to the Restoration. Sir Noel's wry comedies, having survived a brief period of neglect, have certainly entered the canon. Now if only some theatre in town were doing "Enter Laughing" starring Plum's husband Richard Snee, the season would be complete. Of course, there's always at least one group doing "Blithe Spirit."