June 07, 2003|By J. Wynn Rousuck | J. Wynn Rousuck,SUN THEATER CRITIC
One of the main reasons Noel Coward's classic comedy Private Lives is so funny is that the protagonists, former husband-and-wife Elyot and Amanda, though married to new spouses, are clearly made for each other. Sophisticated, sexy and sharp-tongued, they are as alike as two pearl onions in a martini.
This means, of course, that the actors portraying them must also be well-matched. And that's where director Richard Romagnoli's otherwise acceptable production at Olney Theatre Center misses the mark. Affecting a British accent that wavers at best and is non-existent at worst, Paul Morella's Elyot may look debonair, but instead of exuding an air of savoir-faire, he comes across primarily as churlish.
And, despite Romagnoli's best efforts to convey the couple's physical passion - including finding them nearly in flagrante delicto at the start of Act Two - there's an absence of chemistry between Morella's irritable Elyot and Valerie Leonard's siren-like Amanda. From her bobbed hair to her long legs (displayed to advantage by Nanzi Adzima's costumes), Leonard is the stunning embodiment of an urbane hedonist. Her Amanda is the kind of woman mothers warn their sons against - to no avail.
Coward's delectable comedy begins with the improbable coincidence of Amanda and Elyot not only meeting up on their respective second honeymoons, but also occupying side-by-side honeymoon suites. Older and presumably wiser after their first marriage went up in flames, both have clearly settled for more conventionally suitable spouses, whom they have barely bothered to get to know.
Amanda has married Victor, a stuffy, professorial type, played with proper bluster by bespectacled, pipe-smoking James Slaughter. Elyot has wed a silly young woman named Sybil, played by Gillian Shelly with the emphasis on "young," as she demonstrates in a series of comical, toddler-level temper tantrums.
Aided again by Adzima's costumes, Romagnoli does a fine job differentiating between devil-may-care Elyot and pompous, parochial Victor, and especially between callow Sybil and worldly Amanda. In her first scene with Victor, Leonard's Amanda stands atop a terrace balustrade in a show of irrepressibly wild elan. Moments later, when Elyot, having met up with Amanda, desperately tries to convince Sybil that they must leave at once, his intractable bride mounts the balustrade feigning a histrionic suicide attempt. Where one woman appears so carefree she could almost take flight, the other is so bogged down (presumably by propriety), she is ready to hurl herself to the ground.
And yet, after Elyot and Amanda impetuously run off together, instead of emitting torrid sparks, their interaction bogs down. Though their fight scenes have more spirit than their love scenes, if these two were ever "two violent acids bubbling about," as Amanda puts it, they seem to have lost much of their fizz.
Granted, Coward's witty epithets still get laughs. And Jeanne LaSala delivers a wonderfully snooty last-act portrayal of Amanda's insolent, flu-stricken French maid.
However, even designer Robin Stapley's sets seem a bit off. The chief offender is a huge, dowdy blue-gray curtain that does double duty - first outside the honeymoon suites and later inside Amanda's Paris apartment - and manages to look inappropriate in both places. (It's an aesthetic relief when one side of this curtain gets torn down in a second-act fracas.)
But this is, as Elyot says to Sybil, a "quibble." The real problem is that, despite the best efforts of fight choreographer Lorraine Ressegger, without an Elyot who is Amanda's equal, this production simply doesn't pack enough punch.
Private Lives
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Sundays; 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; matinees at 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Through June 29
Where: Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney
Tickets: $15-$35
Call: 301-924-3400
