The perfect actor for the brittle wit of Noel Coward’s bittersweet comedies is still probably Noel Coward.

Who could ever match his acid nonchalance, crisp vowels and hidden menace especially in Elyot, the part he wrote for himself with Gertrude Lawrence as Amanda in Private Lives?

Tom Chambers in Tom Attenborough’s new production presents an Elyot of boyish charm and bouncy bravado without the charisma to carry off the coincidence of finding your first wife while on honeymoon with the second.

Laura Rogers is more credible and sophisticated in her portrayal of the worldly Amanda.

Both actors sing, dance and hurl themselves around the stage in slapstick style, at serious odds with bias cut satin.

Poor doomed Sybil is very nicely done by Charlotte Ritchie in concert with the properly pompous Victor of Richard Teverson. They represent repressed convention: they deserve each other.

The drama depends upon the mores of modern Britain in the 1930s - too near for period comfort, but too far for most memories.

It still leaves us with a lingering acknowledgement that for all the glitz and glitter of cocktails and sequins, life can be difficult, painful and uncertain and ain’t nothing going to change it.

Three stars