Private Lives

Theatre Royal Brighton, New Road, Monday, February 1, to Saturday, February 6

“TIMELESS, human and moving as well as being very funny” is how Tom Attenborough describes Private Lives, Noel Coward’s much-loved 1930 comedy.

The grandson of the late Lord Richard Attenborough is directing a revival of the comedy about a fiery divorced couple who unexpectedly meet again during their respective honeymoons.

It tells the tale of two people who are unable both to live with or without each other.

Playing the would-be lovers are Strictly Come Dancing winner Tom Chambers as Elyot, fresh from his Olivier nomination for starring in Top Hat The Musical, and Tipping The Velvet’s Laura Rogers as Amanda.

Attenborough says the chemistry between the two leads came almost instantly.

“They have an ability to play off each other and play with each other,” he says “It’s exciting to watch them try things out and work together. It was great to see that relationship blossom as they got to know the text and play to those nuances in the story.

“It meant we could get to the text quickly and find those details and moments that could really connect in the play.”

In its day – when plays still had to go through the Lord Chamberlain – Private Lives was seen as quite shocking. Coward penned the play prior to the period when a king had to give up his throne to marry the divorced Mrs Simpson.

Act two sees the pair give up their new marriages to move back together – only to struggle to make their relationship work.

“Amanda and Elyot have risked everything for each other,” says Attenborough. “By the time of the second act they are in social ruin – if the relationship with each other doesn’t work they have nowhere to go. They want to make it – so it’s terrifying when they find themselves in horrible arguments, which are the pattern of their relationship. They can’t help getting into these arguments – they want and need to say things to each other, but they also want the relationship to work.”

Attenborough sees the pair as products of their time – having lived in wealth and glamour in the 1920s only for their world to fall to pieces around them.

He has worked closely with designer Lucy Osborne to bring the details of the 1930s period to life.

“That period is important to the story,” he says. “Coward wrote the play six months after the Wall Street Crash in the US, as the financial repercussions were beginning to be felt.”

The play isn’t just about Elyot and Amanda though. There are their abandoned other halves – Sybil, played by Call The Midwife’s Charlotte Ritchie and Downton Abbey’s Richard Teverson as Victor.

“It was really important that Victor and Sybil were both fully rounded characters,” says Attenborough, admitting he enjoyed the intimacy and focus a five-strong cast allowed him in the rehearsal room.

“It would be easy to make Sybil a bit wet and Victor a bit of a blusterer. It was important to bring those characters to life. They need to have sympathy and an audience needs to understand why Elyot and Amanda would have married them as the antithesis to their previous marriage.”

Such is the power of Coward’s script the playwright had filled in much of the characters’ back stories, meaning in rehearsal it was more about finding out what was going on behind his words than creating a history for each character.

“In many ways Elyot and Amanda are made for each other,” says Attenborough. “It’s in the way they connect. They are such incredibly witty products of their time, but also rebels against the conventions of their time. They are both articulate to the point of stubbornness – they can’t bear to let things go, particularly with each other.

“What attracts them to each other, and repels them against each other, is their ability to see through each other and what each is really like.

“We want to fall in love with Elyot and Amanda – but their behaviour is reprehensible. That to and fro between them is an important part of the play.”

Thrown into this battle of the sexes is Coward’s music – with Private Lives containing one of his best-loved songs Some Day I’ll Find You.

“I thought it would be crazy not to use that song in our production,” says Attenborough. “We have used other songs from the period, and played around with that sense of musicality. Tom and Laura are both very musical in their ways.

“As Elyot and Amanda they dance together sending up dance parties and cocktail parties – having Tom’s gift as a dancer was an added blessing!”

Starts 7.45pm, 2.30pm matinees Thurs and Sat, tickets from £15. Call 08448 717650.