Privat Lives
Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury From January 17, at 2 hrs, on tour
Rating: 
Manor
National Theatre Bis January 1, 2018 2hrs 30mins
Rating: 
Privat LivesThis is the first production of Nigel Havers Theatre Company. Nigel and his co-star Patricia Hodge are in their 70s – pretty good going considering that Noël Coward wrote and starred in it when he was 31.
Havers can be described as Roger Moore and Peter Pan’s child. But I’ll say this for the elegant cad: he can wear a double-breasted dinner jacket as if to the manner born. Hodge is an experienced Coward and has the better stage presence.
The couple plays Elyot & Amanda as a divorcing couple. They re-meet at adjacent hotels balconies while on honeymoon with their dull, new partners. The couple elopes to Paris where they continue their endless bickering.
Nigel and his co-star Patricia Hodge (above) are in their 70s – pretty good going considering that Noël Coward wrote and starred in Private Lives when he was 31
Watch out for the attempted sex on the sofa scene – it’s funnier with two older actors, he wincing with arthritis, she with indigestion.
Natalie Walter, Dugald Bruce Lockhart, and Aicha Kossoko, the French maid, are as ghastly, as their younger, more priggish wives.
Christopher Luscombe’s production has none of the play’s delightful androgyny but instead comes with a heavy hint of Horlicks.
They cut the line ‘certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs’ but this battle of the sexes is still an abrasive old ding-dong. It will be a hit with Havers and ravers. The Christmas break will see the return of the tour.
Manor This is Moira Buffini’s muddled play in which Nancy Carroll portrays the baffling chatelaine from a leaky manor house. She fantasizes about a far-Right villain, and she is played by Endeavour star Shaun Evans.
This is a strange, Leftie, apocalyptic drama about state-of-the nation with an Agatha Christie setting. It serves no purpose.
It’s directed by the playwright’s sister, Fiona Buffini, who failed to demand a major rewrite.