Date/Time
Date(s) - 24 Nov 2012
2:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Location
Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse

BY NOËL COWARD

“Very few people are normal really, deep down in their private lives.”

Excerpt from Private Lives

Having delighted us in Much Ado About Nothing, the highly engaging Toby Schmitz stars in Noël Coward’s comedy classic about love and marriage.

A divorced couple, Amanda and Elyot, and their new spouses, Victor and Sybil, meet by chance while on honeymoon at the same hotel. Old passions begin to simmer and Amanda and Elyot rediscover why they fell in love in the first place… and then what drove them apart. What ensues is the unstitching and stitching up of marriages, proving that… we never really choose who we fall in love with.

The censors did their best to ban the play when Coward wrote it in 1930 (as a vehicle for himself) and it has been refusing to behave for 80 years now. Its wit is definitive, its plotting almost perfect, and its critique of modernity dazzling. The great theatrical adventurer Ralph Myers finally gives himself a directing gig and his task is almost ridiculously pleasurable: to direct Toby Schmitz in Private Lives.