By Noel Coward
Belvoir Street Upstairs Theatre
"I think very few people are completely normal really,
deep down in their private lives."
- Amanda
deep down in their private lives."
- Amanda
Under
the artistic directorship of Ralph Myers, Belvoir has become known of late for
its ‘radical reworkings’ of classics such as the wildly successful Death of a Salesman and last year’s sold
out Thyestes. Now it seems Myers has
decided to jump on the ‘contemporizing-the-classics’ bandwagon with his
misguided attempt at a Coward for the 21st Century. Unfortunately,
despite the hipness of his beard and his cardigan-chic, he misses by a mile.
Myers certainly seems to have all the right ingredients for an innovative
production, including three acclaimed young actors Eloise Mignon, Toby Schmitz
and Toby Truslove, but he somehow manages to disappoint. The inherent problem
with Myers’ production is consistency, or lack of it.
Myer’s
ability to direct has been the subject of great debate amongst theatregoers
since his surprisingly swift promotion to Artistic Director of Belvoir in 2011.
In his second year with Belvoir it seems an odd choice to try and win over the
people, and stake his already tarnished reputation on Cowards ‘comedy of
manners’ about the battle of the sexes and the constraints of marriage. Despite
Myers’ intention to strip Coward’s play of its “pianos and brandy”, revealing
the timeless story of the addictive highs and lows of passion, his attempt to
subvert audience expectations simply robs Coward’s play of its colour and subtlety.
Eagerly
following Simon Stone and Benedict Andrews’ penchant for ‘rocking the classics’, Myers comes off as a wanna-be
cool-kid, and evidence of his directorial hand is actually worryingly scarce. Coward’s
slightly risqué moments and innuendo, which would have been utterly scandalous
in the 1930’s, fall flat with a modern audience, as Myers’ flimsy reworking fails
to reinvigorate Coward’s beautiful script. As Coward’s amusing but now hackneyed
plot unfolds on Myer’s stark stage, we titter at the implausible and unfortunate
coincidence of the honeymoon of Amanda (Zahra Newman) and her new husband
Victor (Truslove) at the same hotel at which her Ex, Elyot (Schmitz), and his
new wife, Sybil (Mignon), are enjoying their own post-nuptial bliss. We are
meant to believe the ‘undeniable’ mutual lust that overrides etiquette and sees
Elyot and Amanda diving once more into each other’s arms, temporarily sweeping
aside their irksome new spouses. Sexual undercurrents and wild desire drive
this play, but the clumsiness of the onstage antics create anything but
chemistry. Rather than generating the heat of the elicit love-affair, Myers’ vision
is about as erotic as his cardigan.
The
problem is, despite the best efforts of his actors, Myers vision is undercooked
and fluctuates between incongruous but entertaining moments of contemporization,
and dull and old-fashioned farce, and this lack of consistency pervades the set
too. Myers’ insipid expanses of clinical white wall, are momentarily animated
by a scene in which Schmitz plays air guitar to Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight, turning a
potentially disastrous lovers’ tiff into an amusing game. This brief bolt of
electricity continues when the oddly humorous, but potentially fatal clash of
two egotists (much more believable than the sexual tension) results in an
inevitably violent outburst, with Amanda and Elyot hurling razor-sharp records
at one another. Thankfully comic relief is also on hand with the appearance of
Louise (Mish Grigor), the stereotypically stubborn French maid, whose amusingly
surly capers lift the final moments of the play from tedious to tolerable.
Unfortunately, these fleeting moments of energy become almost lost in this
otherwise unexciting production.
Sitting
listening to Coward’s fabulous command over the English language and enduring
witticisms, it becomes almost a game to ignore the flawed direction and set
design and enjoy the craftsmanship of the script. Unfortunately, the assortment
of Australian and American accents robs Coward’s words of their clever
commentary on British class wars and instead leaves the audience wishing they
could buy the script at the door, to have any chance of grasping the true
merits of Coward’s work.
This
production left me in no doubt that Myers is a designer in director’s shoes
and, in an attempt to do both; he is simultaneously destroying his reputation
as a designer and as Artistic Director of Belvoir. Myers hasn’t just risked his
own reputation on this one; he has also cheated Coward’s tremendous play of many
of its virtues.
The Details: Private Lives plays until November 11th
Ticket Prices: From $42
Bookings: www.belvoir.com.au/whats-on/
