Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers bring Private Lives to the Brighton stage

It stars Olivier Award-winning Patricia Hodge as Amanda and Nigel Havers himself as Elyot, the role taken by Noël Coward himself in the original production in 1930.

Patricia said: “The play is great fun, but it also has its serious moments. Ultimately it is light in tone, but the clever thing is, as we’re discovering, is that it is so beautifully observed in terms of human nature. It’s a play that was written 90 years ago but we are discovering it is quite extraordinarily modern in some of the things it says. It has endured.

“The real key to any drama surviving is whether or not it is a true examination of human nature and whether it is not just social commentary. With this it really says so much about the human condition.”

Private Lives was seen in the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, nine years ago in a production starring Anna Chancellor and Toby Stephens. They did it at great pace and created comic mayhem.

Patricia is promising something rather different: “You must remember that we are the oldest people, we think, that have ever done this play. The next oldest would be Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and they were in their 50s. But I think this shows that it is a play relevant to everybody, definitely including older people. It is about two people that can’t live together and yet can’t live apart. It makes you realise that human nature is the same whatever your age.”

In the piece Elyot and Amanda, who were once married to each other, find themselves on honeymoon with their new partners, in the same hotel in the South of France and admiring the vista from adjoining balconies. Their initial horror evaporates as, within no time at all, they’re sharing cocktails, cigarettes and a romantic serenade and rekindling their previous passion…

Caring nothing for scandal, they elope to Amanda’s Paris flat where their lust thaws as quickly as it had reignited and they resume the slanging match which drove them apart in the first place.

Patricia is playing Amanda in a production which should have seen the light of day a long time ago but was delayed by the pandemic.

“I agreed to do this more than two years ago now. The photos that you can see on the posters were taken in March 2019. We were going to be doing it autumn (2020) and then it was put back until the spring (of 2021) and then we decided to delay the whole thing until (last autumn).

“None of us worked for a year (during the pandemic) but we were all united in it. Everybody had to suffer with it. You just had to think that there was a bigger picture going on and I just laid low for a while. I survived by doing the things everybody else did. I made sure that I kept healthy and I walked a lot and I spoke to a lot of people on Zoom.

“There was the odd thing that was happening, recordings that we could do. Everybody would be working remotely and I think I recorded a book. We were all masked up and we made it work that way.

“But I think the film and TV industry has done enormously well to find a way to carry on and to make sure that they keep working.

Patricia doesn’t believe the pandemic has particularly altered her appreciation of the theatre:

“I don’t think I feel any more or any less than I ever did about it.

“It is about human proximity and about human experience and sharing it together, and really nothing can ever replace that. I think film and TV are wonderful media and they can tell a story in a particular way. They are extremely creative and wonderful but live theatre stands alone and there is nothing quite like it.”

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