the Private Lives Program

I ’ D R AT H E R M A R R Y
A B OA CON S T R I C T O R
LOVE AND MARRIAGE IN COWARDLY FASHION
By Laura Hope, Dramaturg
T
a-year industry in the U.S: We have magazines, professional wedding planners,
chic wedding boutiques, movies, self-help books, bridal fairs, the annual
“Running of the Brides” at bridal stores across the country, and scores
of reality TV shows, from Bridezillas to The Bachelor, that show us
how (or how not) to get married.
Of prime importance are the websites dedicated to finding your
perfect match for you. eHarmony explains that its creator, Dr.
Neil Warren Clark, has found a foolproof way to get your perfect
match and promises that “eHarmony is the only relationship site on
the web that creates compatible matches based on 29 Dimensions
that are scientifically proven to predict happier, healthier relationships.”
He should know, he’s a doctor, after all—that must make it scientific.
Not to be outdone or out-doctored, Match.com managed to score an
endorsement from Dr. Phil; he even writes helpful little articles for the
site on how to increase your ability to find your perfect match, sight
unseen, over the internet. On Match.com, you even get to create
your own dating “headline,” such as, “Tarzan with the pheromones
of a bull mastiff looking for his perfect Jane.” Should Tarzan email
you through Match.com, there is even a button to push so that you
can email his profile to all of your best friends for their assessments.
It’s a lot of work, once you sign up for a paid subscription to one of
these sites. People spend hours crafting their profiles and choosing
photos to project the most marriageable version of themselves into
the wide-open spaces of the internet. I can never quite think of internet
dating without hearing the voices of Hodel and Chava from Fiddler on the
Roof: ”Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me
a catch.” The push to find and marry people off to their soulmates has never quite
been quite so darn pushy as it is now.
But what if you finally meet your perfect soulmate and discover—like Amanda Prynne and
Elyot Chase in Private Lives—that you despise him or her? “Yes,” you think, “this is the person
for me!” Nobody else makes you feel so good. Although, curiously, nobody else can quite
make you feel so bad, either, or so homicidal and entirely lunatic. ”Hmm…” you think, “how
vexing.” No, you cannot live without them! They always say just the right thing…. except
when they are saying just the wrong thing, and there never seems to be any in-between.
“Hmm…” you reflect, “how curious.” The sound of their voice grates on your nerves like
a mosquito buzzing, as on and on they drone about the impending visit of their mother
(whom you hate) as she prepares to descend upon your home like the Valkyrie after some
bad shellfish. And another thing, the way your PSM (perfect soulmate) slurps soup should be
grounds for public execution to pay for the public humiliation you endure every single time
you are out to dinner with the Prynnes and your beloved soulmate enthusiastically orders
the crab bisque. Then there is the issue of the correct position of the toilet seat, which
in its resting and natural position is, of course, down. How hard is that to comprehend?
Apparently, you think, very hard—at least for that idiot known as your PSM.
here are so many ways to meet
your fabled soulmate: eHarmony,
Match.com, Craigslist, other people’s weddings, cruising
the grocery story in heels. Be honest: We’ve all heard tales about
the legendary effectiveness of Bay Area singletons hanging out
at Whole Foods, Berkeley Bowl, or Safeway in the Marina.
Finding Mr. or Ms. Right has become as much of a national
pastime as baseball or watching one’s 401(k) sink into oblivion.
Weddings are like rock stars in American iconography: We are
distracted and preoccupied with them, and this preoccupation
extends to getting unmarried, as well as to trying to legislate who
can get married and who cannot. We are a marriage-obsessed
culture—so obsessed, in fact, that we’ve turned getting married
into a commodity. Getting married has become a $75-million-
You still can’t live without said individual, but you can’t live with them, either. You still love
them like you’ve never loved anyone before; but truth be told, you also really, truly hate
PHOTOS: FLICKR: VITALY.KOROLEV, FLICKR: LIU JOEY.
them a good portion of the time. That line between love and hate is a lot
thinner than even the old ’60s pop song told us. Dr. Neil Warren Clark
with his 29 Dimensions of compatibility never warned you it would be
like this. But Noël Coward did. He warned us all in his great comic
plays, and especially in Private Lives.
Stephen Greenblatt and other scholars have remarked that
Shakespeare seemed to be a bit of a cynic about romantic love in
his so-called great love stories. Let’s look at the evidence: Antony
and Cleopatra fought with each other like cats and dogs and
ended up dead. Romeo and Juliet had people fighting about
them like cats and dogs, and ended up dead. Hamlet and
Ophelia? Dead. Othello and Desdemona? Dead. The
Macbeths seemed to have a happy marriage, but then
PHOTOS: DIVORCE CAKES COURTESY OF
again, they were murderous sociopaths. So maybe
DR. LAURA HOPE.
Shakespeare was a little cynical about soulmatedom
as a panacea for what ails us. Yet Shakespeare had
nothing on Noël Coward. Shakespeare showed us
love crumbling under tremendously exacerbating
circumstances. Coward takes a more day-today approach: He shows us that it is virtually
impossible to cohabitate with the one you
love for any length of time, even in an overprivileged, relatively low-stress environment, without
wanting to kill each other.
There is little doubt that Amanda and Elyot are in love with each other, and have been obsessively so
for nearly a decade. Yet, by the end of Act Two, they are engaged in a vicious, violent domestic brawl
usually only seen on an episode of Jerry Springer. They hate each other. They love each other. There
is no in-between: Amanda and Elyot are toxic soulmates. When asked if he will remarry Amanda, Elyot
tells us, “I’m not going to marry Amanda…She’s a vile tempered, wicked woman…. I’d rather marry a
ravening leopard.” Amanda is little better at explaining their relationship saying, “I hate him. When I saw
him again…It swept me away completely. He attracted me; he always attracted me, but only the worst
part of me. I see that now…I’d rather marry a boa constrictor.” Funny, yes. Painful, yes. It is also an apt
description of their love. They love each other like a ravening leopard and a boa constrictor. It will never
work, and yet as we watch them exit hand in hand, we know it will also never end. He will devour her and
she will squeeze the life out of him, till death do them part. As Shakespeare aptly wrote in A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, “The course of true love never did run smooth.” Sometimes, in fact, it’s just awful.
Coward teaches us that finding our perfect soulmate can actually be a nasty bit of business. For the
marrieds, next time your PSM does that thing that makes you mental, think of Amanda and Elyot,
and try to laugh. Laughter is cheaper than divorce court. For the singletons, next time you log in to
eHarmony or Match.com to see what the old “Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match” site has
dredged up for you today— courtesy of Dr. Neil Warren Clark or endorsed by Dr. Phil—just remember
the courteous advice of “Dr.” Noël, and be very careful what you wish. Noël Coward seemed all-toopainfully aware that the longed-for, fairytale ending just wasn’t in store for all of us. Consider this song
lyric he once wrote, and then consider yourself warned:
“I am no good at love…
For I feel the misery of the end
In the moment that it begins
By Philippa Kelly, Resident Dramaturg
Politeness has been called
their honeymoons, only manners will
stop them from exploding in frustration.
And the problem for them both is that
manners just aren’t worth it.
the most acceptable hypocrisy, and, for
Amanda and Elyot in Noël Coward’s
Private Lives, hypocrisy isn’t very
acceptable.
Quickly, Amanda and Elyot finish
their drinks and, like children with
Band-aids, they rip the top off their
newly-built worlds. Together they run
headlong forward … to the past. And
it’s only when they get there that they
remember why they left—they got
divorced five years ago because neither
could stand the other’s bad manners!
On the very day we meet them,
Amanda and Elyot, once married to
each other, are embarking on their
honeymoons with their new, younger
spouses. How could they have known
that they would choose the same fancy
French hotel? Very quickly they realize
that they face an awful future—a future
of good manners. What prompts this
revelation? Each other.
“It’s discouraging to think how many
people are shocked by honesty and
how few by deceit,” Coward said in
his comedy, Blithe Spirit, written 15
years after Private Lives. If honesty is
unacceptable, deceit is unendurable.
Where does this leave Amanda
and Elyot in Private Lives? Probably
sympathizing with Coward, who
once said of himself: “I’ve sometimes
thought of marrying, and then I’ve
thought again.” n
Peeping across from their respective
honeymoon balconies, Amanda and
Elyot can’t help reminding each other
of who they really are. They look at
each other, they share a furtive drink—
and they realize that the future, for
both of them, consists of eternally
reassuring their insecure new spouses,
while the past, with each other, looks
rather enchanting. If they continue on
And the bitterness of the last good-bye
Is the bitterness that wins.” n
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WWW.CALSHAKES.ORG
CALIFORNIA SHAKESPEARE THEATER
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PICTURED: 1: CONSTANCE
COLLIER, NOËL COWARD, &
NEYSA MCMEIN (NYPL DIGITAL
GALLERY). 2: NOËL COWARD AND
GERTRUDE LAWRENCE. 3: NOËL
COWARD. 4: NOËL COWARD AND
VIVIEN LEIGH. 5: NOËL COWARD.
6: ALFRED LUNT, LYNN FONTANNE,
& NOËL COWARD (PHOTOGRAPH
BY FLORENCE VANDAMM). 7: NOËL
COWARD & GERTRUDE LAWRENCE
IN A PRODUCTION OF PRIVATE
LIVES. 8: NOËL COWARD. 9: NOËL
COWARD WITH JUDY GARLAND
(LEFT), & LAUREN BACALL IN 1955
(NOËL COWARD COLLECTION /
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM).
10: NOËL COWARD, ALFRED
LUNT, & LYNN FONTANNE IN
DESIGN FOR LIVING (BILLY ROSE
THEATRE COLLECTION). 11: ANDRÉ
HATTINGH & PHILIP GODAWA AS
GERTRUDE LAWRENCE AND NOËL
COWARD IN NOËL AND GERTIE.
12: SCENE FROM NOËL COWARD’S
PRIVATE LIVES (1932) WITH NOËL
COWARD AT THE PIANO AND
GERTRUDE LAWRENCE ON HIS LAP.
“HE INVITED
THE PRESS
IN TO HIS
APARTMENT TO
PHOTOGRAPH
HIM LOUNGING
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THE RAP ON
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REPUTATION
With the spectacular opening of Private Lives at the turn of the new decade, Coward’s
reputation turned to that of sophistication and elegance. Perhaps he was just too successful
during the 1930s to maintain the pose of the social outsider. With the onset of World War II,
Coward’s reputation changed significantly once again. Rather then the decadent youth of the
1920s, Coward became “Our Noël” for the British public. He championed the war effort by
writing, co-directing, producing, and starring in the movie In Which We Serve, an account of
the British navy in battle.
By Robert Estes, Grove Talk Speaker
The critical reputation of Private Lives has swung dramatically since its 1930
debut. Although a box office hit, one critic wrote that future generations will be
“wondering what on earth these fellows…saw in so flimsy a trifle.” Yet, more than
70 years later, Noël Coward’s special brand of facile, biting wit is held in great
regard. Concurrent with our production, a Coward exhibition is running at the
Museum of Performance and Design in San Francisco. And American Conservatory
Theater will kick off their new season in September with a theatrical version of the
movie Brief Encounter, which is based on Coward’s one-act play Still Life.
Unfortunately, the sentimental, patriotic figure of the 1940s did not play well for the “angry
young men” of 1950s British theater. Suffice to say, he was treated as a relic of a bygone
era and he ended up spending a significant part of the decade performing a déclassé but
lucrative lounge show in Las Vegas. He was left for dead in the theater world … until a London
revival of Private Lives in 1963 suddenly brought him back in vogue.
Since Coward gained fame in the 1920s, his reputation has taken on a different
coloration with each succeeding decade. He first hit the big time in 1924 when
he wrote and starred in The Vortex, a play that explored drug addiction and illicit
sex. The whiff of immorality surrounding the play was cultivated by Coward in the
creation of his own nonconformist persona. Soon after the play opened, he invited
the press in to his apartment to photograph him lounging in bed till noon. Almost
overnight, he became a symbol of the Jazz Age’s rebellious, hedonistic youth.
Coward was a performer as well as a playwright, and his reputation rested not only on his plays
but on his hilarious, mannered portrayals, including that of Private Lives’ Elyot Chase. Coward
worried at times that he had never written an “important” play—that his brilliant wit was not
enough. But he seems to have obtained some relief from the realization that Private Lives and
other top plays such as Hay Fever, Design for Living, Present Laughter, and Blithe Spirit “were
important because they had given a vast number of people a great deal of pleasure.” n
IN BED TILL
NOON.”
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