Review: APT's PRIVATE LIVES Passionately Explores How Long Can Love Be Perfect?

Noël Coward's popular play Private Lives currently on stage at American Players Theatre might be ripped from modern entertainment headlines. These scenes of two recently divorced spouses reconnecting for a romantic tryst could be versions of Duchess Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew living unmarried under one roof (after their long ago divorce) and wishing for royal approval to remarry. Or perchance reminiscent of Gyweneth Paltrow and Coldplay's Chris Martin separating and naming their split a "conscious uncoupling," Coward's 1930 production appears more believable decades later, continually relevant for contemporary audiences.

Inside Spring Green's Up-the Hill Theatre, formerly married for three years and then divorced Amanda Prynne and Elyot Chase uncouple from their newlywed spouses Victor and Sybil on their respective honeymoons in Deauville, France. Impending disaster looms over these four lives beginning new marital bliss with certainty. Deborah Staples and James DeVita recreate the iconic roles of Amanda and Elyot using provocative energy on stage while channeling palpable sensual chemistry that permeates the theater.

This tantalizing APT evening mixes in Andrew Boyce's lush French set designs, which includes a beautiful black grand piano, and the actors wearing Alejo Vietti's exquisite costumes. A night under the summer stars where audiences can feast on Coward's wit and contemplate that "very few people are completely normal in their private lives."

To illustrate these words, Staples and DeVita possess the very madness love can entail in Amanda and Elyot, an emotion available for the young and those a little older alike, because they are seasoned lovers. While Elyot ponders the "calmer, sensible and wiser" love he believes might be more sustainable in his second marriage to Sybil, the debonair DeVita's facial expressions reach the audience far beyond his words.

Yet, when the gorgeous Amanda appears courtesy of Staples, passion reignites inside both characters, even when they believe their five-year separation has "mellowed and perfected them." Is all love as Amanda believes, "Too perfect to last? " A thought Amanda revisits when Staples sings with delicate charm, "Someday I'll Find You."

Whenever the audience's attention strays from the riveting amour of Staples and DeVita, Kelsey Brennan's lovely Sybil and John Taylor Phillips' s devoted Victor temper Coward's comedy with honorable decorum in the roles of the disposed other halves of the newlyweds. The two left-behind spouses beoome appropriately appalled after they visit the reconnected twosome hidden away in Amanda's Paris apartment, A few days interrupted briefly by Amanda's maid Louise, Elyse Edelman who speaks volumes using a few words in French.

The delightful APT evening directed by James Bohnen characterizes the ensuing uncertainity living between two European world wars and America's deepening economic depression across the pond. An era when living for the moment, and believing neither heaven nor hell exist as Amanda says, could quite possibly be the best of all worlds. A similarity experienced when reading today's current events where ongoing economic crisis linger alongside never ending global war zones.

As part of the status quo in 2015, individuals in numerous cultures post and freely allow "the entire world" to view an individual's every moment of personal life on social media. Then what constitutes normal or private? Coward could garner reams of material for several plays where his sophisticated humor and dialogue would rise well above the endless entertainment chatter on today's internet, and question this phenomena.

Lucky for APT theatergoers, superb acting, elegance in production design and Coward's impeccable, almost poetic dialogue, enthrall audiences despite the chinks of chauvinism and domestic violence that creep almost unnoticed into the script. These subjects stiill perplex modern audiences as they did in the early 20th century, and speak again to the timelessness of Coward's play. All very heady material for one astute 1930's comedy of manners where Staples and DeVita convince the audience to consider amid the abundant laughter the validity of love and their own vulnerability in private life.

American Players Theatre presents Private LIves at the Up the Hill Theatre in Spring Green through October. For information, picinic lunches, special programming or tickets, please call: 608.588.2361 or www.americanplayers.org.

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