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Good evening and welcome to our first torch post-show conversation.

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It's Thursday, the 3rd of March 2022, and we're in the Bar Oxford Playhouse before tonight's performance of No Coward's Private Lives,

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starring Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers.

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It's a new production directed by Christopher Luskin and the inaugural show from Nigel Havers own production company.

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If you're not familiar with the play, here's a quick rundown from the marketing company.

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Elliott's and Amanda, who were once married, find themselves on honeymoon with their new partners in the same hotel on the French coast,

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admiring the view from adjoining balconies in their initial horror quickly evaporates and soon Hasharon cocktails.

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Who knows what the future holds now?

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The play was written by 20th century British playwright Noel Coward, who played the role of Eliot's in the original production in 1930.

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We'll be joined later by Dr Seuss. Altus and Professor Kerstin Shepherd are no strangers to the Oxford purchasing.

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We'll be discussing their take on the production. For now, it's time to take your seats and wait for the curtains.

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Go up on private lives. OK, so it's now after the show.

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I'm here with sauce and pests, and OK, so we've seen it.

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It was a big production, a lavish production, quite spectacular set that said that we can't show that to people who are going to be listening to this.

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But and so Stewart to us off by just telling us a little bit.

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If you don't mind about private lives, about private life, written and produced in 1930, written by khallad very, very quickly, while he was,

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if I remember at each other in Hong Kong, Singapore, and he said he had this vision of Gertrude Lawrence in a white mullaney gown in the moonlight.

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And that's what it all came from. He absolutely wrote it for her.

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And it's it's perfect for her.

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In that said, so part of what I was feeling as I watched it tonight was just how how sexy as a role Amanda

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is that kind of vibrancy and ruthlessness and energy and kind of charisma that's in that room.

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So cold, but interesting character. He acted with Gertrude Line, followed by then.

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They've been friends ever since they met at the age of, I think, 13, when they played in angelic chorus,

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it back happening cruise and promptly threw up, apparently very angelic.

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So they've been very close friends and collaborators in lots of ways through that and how talked about how a little known he said.

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It was a cheat because it's a play in which Victor and Sybil, the spouses they dump, are really very, very second string roles.

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And he said I was against Eliot and Amanda, and then he said the court room was written.

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You said that really only one role. So it's really interesting that there's a sense in which they're like that.

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The I mean, almost like a kind of platonic. That I do, you know, atomic creatures,

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Plato's Symposium and the idea of the the beings that you have four legs and four arms and then get split in half.

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Yeah, except the hole that they never quite make a hole, but nor are they complete without each other.

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Yeah, and it's interesting.

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I think I was just looking at that, that introduction you wrote that you wrote where he said that thing about the characters,

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the secondary characters being wooden and they're just not what, you know, he he sort of charmingly says, I really wrote terrible secondary rule.

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But he said he because he acted and wasn't he? Yeah, yeah.

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So he played. He played earlier. Judge Gertrude Learning played Amanda.

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Yeah. And Laurence Olivier and Laurence Olivier played Victor.

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And that's because he said Victor has to be very attractive to explain why Amanda would have married him.

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So the idea that Victor's this kind of desperately unstrap, you know, he's the kind of boorish, boring one that was played by Laurence Olivier.

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Yeah, but it's interesting because I think in this piece where he charmingly lays out the

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background to the play and he quotes himself for not having written parts very well.

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But he says he was a great director or something like that if he were not playwright.

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So he he gets in and out of the role of playwright and actor. You know, he's doing both with the.

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So he's as an actor. I think he's saying, well, I wish the play had been better written,

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something like that and pointed out because I think I don't said I know which is a bit better written.

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I think he means I wish I'd been more generous. That's exactly right.

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Coaching roles for himself in all his major comedies, yeah, right,

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said the very first choice of the vortex instead of hay fever in which play he first wanted produce was because the Vortex had a great role for him,

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and he didn't in the same way. Yeah, oh yeah. All all of his major comedies are perfect roles for him,

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so I think when he's saying I didn't bother much with Victor in Seville, he's like, Yeah, because he really impressed.

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So it's not. Yeah, I don't think he's admitting any flaws in the play. I think you're just saying it.

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It's a bit ungenerous and, you know, spreading out the charm. Yeah.

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Oh, I know. But I mean, it's I kept thinking about Oscar Wilde when we talked about this earlier that I just kept hearing his indebtedness to Wilde.

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And yet you were saying he wasn't. Actually, that's one really interesting, said Coward says after hay fever, which is his hugely successful comedy.

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He says, You know, I got this kind of reputation for wit.

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We've actually, if you go through the play contains great witticisms like which get the biggest laughs like this.

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Haddock is disgusting, and the lines from private lives that are really famous are things like very flat Norfolk.

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Oh yeah, which is sort of funny when Amanda says it, but utterly unfamiliar to me that you have.

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It's that you had to be that joke. Oh, the [INAUDIBLE] about you even make it sound like it's Sybil thought.

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She says, Well, it wasn't that she made it flatter, but it's like, you know, you can't cut off, be murdered.

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The love you both could get the the timing exactly right, but it's got to be in context.

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So whereas whereas with Wilde, you were saying, you know, I was writing this sort of epic dramatic language, I don't think it is epic romantic.

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It's perfectly paced. It's if I was really noticing the first act, there's nothing beyond two or three lines.

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I mean the bit when Elliot does, you know how beautiful you can withstand moonlight?

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Yeah, that's about six lines, and it feels like a kind of epic speech compared to these tiny to and fro.

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Yeah, that's true. But they're not with waltz plays, the reviews used to kind of control the the witticism.

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Yeah, and they were like takeaways, you know? Well, they're all those that get stuck on people's of and all the rest of counts.

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Lines aren't stuck on details and they might help you. But I keep hearing those patterns.

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So you'll have a composition about men and women. It's all about men and women and kind of wisdom about about the sexes.

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And it's the same. They do claim something very well.

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Women are always excited and then it's well, men are always, but it's always the first one organised.

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And that's it. I mean, in one sense, Amanda's mocking that.

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I mean, I was realising how much fun exactly that men and women's roles and so on the play and we kind of complete takes apart.

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It's kind of gender roles in some ways. I mean, it's 1933, and I love the way he talks about how, you know,

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Victor will sort of, you know, well, Victor will give you what form and analysis it's.

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I'll screen if he does. I don't see, you know. So there's also the bit where he says he said, Oh, something, it's really not not right.

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If she has affairs, if she catches him out on that, absolutely. She says mine would let me go.

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Nibble on my caraway biscuit. Yeah, my crew. Yeah, it's a kind of it's a great, very modern moment.

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Yeah, it really works now. Yeah. Oh, well, if he knows with the audience when she's, you know, when he said, Well, yes, but it's different for women.

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And how cool is it? Yeah, yeah. I was like a Panopto anyway, so I wondered if I could ask you about how you felt.

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If it played in the house tonight, it was a full house. Oh, you know, being where we are and I'm reopening and all of those kind of things.

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What does that do for you to be in that kind of auditorium? It's lovely.

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I think I think in some ways how much the audience enjoyed it was really moving people.

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Yeah, I mean, there's laughter, right? From kind of the second line or something like that.

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Well, I hadn't realised how much. It wasn't just that I missed theatre, but I miss comedy being in a room, laughing at something in so much.

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It's so joyful to have them back and immediate lots of people.

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And I can remember once going to a what was it called carry on.

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Tell me it was that. It was that play that was a redo, it was sort of about the carry on films don't play.

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It was a farce by Terry Johnson. I think the what was then the politics beneath it, a huge short term sum sold no tickets at all.

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It was actually pretty good. But nobody people smiled.

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They didn't laugh. Yeah, it's really unusual. But. Whereas you get a certain sort of critical mass.

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Yeah. And people laugh. Yeah. And it's a wonderful like that full auditorium.

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And I think there was that much more laughter because it sort of freaks you out, really.

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I think it's very rare. You laugh on your own out loud and it's weirdly in company.

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Do? So I think there's a kind of human really infectious. And I felt that the actors were right from the beginning.

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It was they were really responding. I mean, they're such expert actors and they were just really warming to the whole experience.

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And maybe it's I wonder what it was like for actors in this whole period of they're not having the love.

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Yeah. And getting back into that must be such a thrill. Well, it's incredibly hard.

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I mean, the other thing is doing the the kind of Zoom theatre stuff, etc. and it's like, we find it hard enough lecturing.

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But the idea of performing is absolute silence. I know what I wanted to ask, is it OK to jump in and just say, should we talk about the chain?

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One of the big substantial change, which was the edge because normally I guess the script calls for them to be only five years

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or five years older than I can be a bit more needs for five years since they last met,

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since they first married and the sense of I'm going to is playing once and it's all about you.

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But because it's second marriage and because there aren't the mention of ages, it's really interesting.

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It's been revived so many times by people, you know, way past. So if it was done in 1930, then Coward was thirty one.

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Yeah, you know, that was I was really young.

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Yeah, yeah, it was one of the very, very early roles. So it it's in many ways a young play.

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It's about that's the whole thing is when I mean, it's a line to play very differently.

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So yeah, I mean, Patricia Hodge looks fantastic, but when she says, I feel like I'm crumbling away and that's me, she's like 30 until crumbling.

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But also when somebody refers to somebody else as a baby, a mere baby.

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Yeah, it takes on a different meaning when that person is, you know, 50 as opposed to 25 or 30.

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So there's an interesting thought.

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I mean, it's an interesting one, and it still works with older actors because there's no sense in which the whole point at the end of the play,

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it's you don't think they're going to change out, you know, it's all going to endlessly repeat.

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So the idea that they behaving exactly the same in 50 years time is entirely believable.

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Yeah, yeah.

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You know, whether they're 30, you probably shouldn't speculate on the underlying term because we were just talking with your students earlier.

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I think some of them were mentioning about things like the domestic violence and the

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some of the things that we would be really uncomfortable with now are still retained.

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This version was really faithful. I couldn't detect very much cutting or changing lines.

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And you know, the play better. I can't. I can't.

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There's a line that they drew the line when I can't remember it happening is the one where, yes, actually.

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She asked how old Sybil is. Oh yeah. And he says, and they say, Yeah, yeah.

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However old, he said. I think he said something like 20s. Yeah, maybe three or something like that.

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There's all you've really run out, which obviously with that cap of an age difference would be,

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yeah, that would be too much of a problem I could go against. Yeah, that was one moment.

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There were a few, yes, but they were sort of necessary given the casting, whereas thought everything else was retained.

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But even then, culturally insensitive things about the world trip and Daniel Day in the village and things like that.

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Yeah, but it just it just struck me that some of the things like the violence and the hitting, you know,

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hitting a woman and all these things are there played for laughs and I was anxious going to see it,

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whether I would be laughing and whether how would I take that? So I actually wanted it a bit more.

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Go for it. Did you look? I mean, all that kind of.

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Well, not not a really sinister level. I mean, it should be retaining the comedy, but more the sense of, well, partly they were very obviously staged.

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Yeah. And the slap was so obvious stations that it wasn't that it was as though they were

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sort of wary of even doing a staged slap that didn't look like an obviously stage.

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Yeah. Whereas actually, I think with similar victor they got.

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It was an interesting choice. I think they got several and Victor's argument much more full on than any of Amanda's.

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Yeah, which is an interesting, well, the stage directions in which Elliott and Amanda fight really,

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really went on on the floor and punching each other must have completely wrecked the apartment.

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Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of like cut off before it, really? Yeah.

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Full on. And actually, I think I mean, it's interesting this the students who are studying it.

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I gave it kind of that was to get the weird look back in anger.

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Oh yeah. Taste of honey.

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I can't even remember the other ones that were in there, but that sense of actually put it next to things like, Oh, I'm east is east,

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which has actually really quite really disturbing kind of violence in that and where it stops being funny at that moment.

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Yeah. Mm hmm. But there was a sense in which they kind of sensed that kind of love, hate,

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difficult relationship, the kind of the way to which none of those plays were romanticising it.

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There was a kind of, I mean, sort of emotional viciousness. In many ways that's behind, Oh, look back in anger.

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Yeah. The other thing that struck me as I was watching it was actually how even.

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It is between Elliot, and I'm not going to say because she gets it right back.

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Oh, he initiated by hitting her, but she wallops him eventually.

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What does the record over the head and all that? Yeah. So she's absolutely giving it back, and she says that.

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Do you remember how to play her? She announces, No, no, no. I give it right back to him.

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I can take care of myself. Yeah, ta to. Yeah. And there's no question about that.

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Yeah. And I think you kind of seeing that give and take. Well, you know, so be it.

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Absolutely. I think and I think that equality in the relationship kind of shifts it in other ways.

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And he put it next to something might look back in anger where there's not the same physical violence.

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But another way, I mean, I'm fascinated by private lives is a play that goes around in circles.

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I mean, it's kind of I mean, it's fundamentally not that different from waiting for Godot in structure.

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Yeah. It goes nowhere. They sit around talking. They do nothing.

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In lots of ways, it's a play about passing the time in a co-dependent, dysfunctional, in some ways, relationships.

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So actually. Waiting for Godot was Fatima. Arrestable relationship is an interesting one,

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and yet it's actually compared to look back in anger where the way that that

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relationship works is thanks to her having lost her baby thanks to a miscarriage,

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thanks to her being sterile. You know, there's a kind of despairing and I think sort of fundamentally quite misogynist view,

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which I would not in a million years, you know, said no violence in private lives, but it's it's part of their relationship.

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It's not. It's not misogynistic in any way.

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You know, it's so it's a really interesting study in a dysfunctional functional relationship.

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But it's not about gender imbalance, it's not about exploitation, which I think it's pretty rare.

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Yeah. And it's interesting what you said about the wedding, because did you notice with the the blocking that that act,

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whether it's building toward the big and the big fight?

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But there's so much just kind of somebody sits on the sofa and just stares

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out into space and is watching the other just waiting for some kind of power.

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They're sort of like caged animals. Yeah, circling. Yeah, but pretending to be occupied.

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But really,

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they're just kind of holding a pillow or smoking a cigarette or doing something that's just passing the time and watching each other all the time.

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They're always aware of what the other one is do, and that's how it was done really beautifully.

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Yeah, I mean, in that sense, the blocking was part of the community like this.

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Don't marry each other in some. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And actually, this afternoon, I was talking to Joe,

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who here who was saying she was thinking after watching it, she was just thinking, I just need a job.

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You know. Yeah, well, it's the moment where he picks up a book like his second.

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Oh, but actually, if they have something to do? Yeah, it might work, but they haven't.

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And it's actually in that sense, I don't think it's accidental because Coward is not an admirer of the idle rich.

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You know, it can look good. And I think it's that I love.

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I mean, that's what Pinter admired and coward's plays. And what counted more than Pinto's was objectivity that both they both use the same term.

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I don't think they'd sort of read each other saying it with each other.

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But the ways in which they depict the characters they represent, but they don't ask you to admire them.

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They don't hold them up as anything but just what they are. Yeah. And coward.

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You know, there's a point in this. I think I found it in the 19 late 1950s writing in this journal.

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You know, the the idle rich are always will be and always have been fundamentally boring.

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You know? But I think that you're going to be amused by them to be entertained by them with that.

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But he's not saying that great. But then the interesting thing is when they start playing music,

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every time there's music and she starts singing and he's playing the piano, if something happens there, they get the chemistry back.

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There's something we see that connects them. And it's when they're not talking.

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So I wonder, is that really built into the play I can remember? It's interesting.

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I think I think they extended that. So partly Patricia Hodge, I remember doing I can't remember county custody.

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It was called.

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So it was a sort of review that was done in the West End for quite a while of just a sort of melee of snippets from the plays and sketches.

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And so, yeah, OK. Yeah. So she kind of.

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So I think that was yeah, that was partly of we've got we've got somebody who's an absolute master of this.

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Yeah, give them a bit more time. So you think possibly. I think that I don't know the second act songs, certainly being quite as extended as that.

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So I think that was partly but everything about Gertrude Lawrence wasn't.

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She also, didn't she? Yeah, there was a lot. Yeah, absolutely.

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So it is a vehicle for that. But it's interesting you say not when they're talking because there's a great article by Frances Grey in that.

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Oh yeah. Look back in pleasure. Collection of essays on it.

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And she talks about the idea that with when people sort of come together as lovers in coward's place,

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she likens it to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing.

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And the moment where there's almost like a little hiccup and they come into sync.

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Yeah, and that's that that there's a sense in which there's a sort of verbal game that they play and then

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they know exactly and you get it in the balcony scene at the beginning when he turns to her and says,

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You know, there's not a bit of you, I don't know. Yeah. And so and when he said, is there any doubt about it?

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And she says, no. And so on. And there's a sense which it's it's always been there that in sync with each other or, you know,

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once they start writing each other and then exactly what they mean, exactly how they used language.

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So yeah, there's it's interesting, but that's also when it all comes off the rails.

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Yeah, because we have between Fred and Ginger movies like Shall We Dance?

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The whole thing hinges on it, actually, because they fight like banshees when they're not dancing.

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And then the minute they're gladiatorial, Beatrice and Benedick. Yeah.

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You know, some of the restoration companies that fantastic, just that sense of hostility that, you know, masked is great.

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And then when they're done bothering you? Yeah. Verbal sparring.

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And then when they don't, they just it's very gratifying and satisfying to kind of feel that in sync happening.

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But I think there's a question in place when you get a kind of verbal dance if you sentence and you get physical dance,

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but you also get the speaking the same language, understanding each that.

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I mean, there's a lot of that. It's in that sense is very Shakespearean to the idea of the characters when they are equals, that playing that game,

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which is absolutely ambitious mandate, which is so enjoyable to witness because you see you're seeing that,

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that verbal sparring with it, it's like, Wow, then these I mean,

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they're just holding their own version and they're able to have a bit of distance from the conversation as well and formulate everything beautifully.

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But I do. I keep coming back to what. But I did think I kept seeing Gwendolyn and Cecily, for example.

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And you know? Yes, absolutely. Do you take your coffee and shall I call your men?

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Do you know this kind of this this complete performance?

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Well, while they're pretending to be socially well behaved, that they're really reserved for both wild and casual.

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There are so many semi playwrights writing comedies of manners whether.

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Really about much more like this sort of restoration ones where the people, the people who know how to master manners.

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In some ways are the insiders versus the sets who don't know how to, you know, the kind of let the ones who want the aristocrats.

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Yeah, all the time. You don't like the game. Yes.

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But there are a lot of plays also where it's about good manners, good good manners, a good heart.

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So good that counts. But none of that.

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You know when when Amanda says a I've got values like, you know, being kind to people will depends on which people say,

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Oh, well, then you know, she said something like giving money to beggar women.

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So they did change that line. I mean, it ends up being kind to people.

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Yeah. But so there were maybe this will also help.

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Well, she's been. That's kind of I wrote, You like helping little old lady? Yeah, yeah.

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But it's just away with the cash cow. It was an outsider.

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I mean, certainly, you know, celebrity that brought him into it. His success?

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Yeah, he was spend a lot of time and parties given by, you know, the rich and aristocratic and all the rest of it as the kind of brutal entertainment.

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I think of him very much treated like that. Yeah.

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You know, you were going to wield whatever money and you certainly find it very, very rude of the time and it's very unimpressed by it.

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And I think in the same way the world is Irish in England, that's well as great.

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Yes, I think that's an outsider's view on how that system works.

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Is that brilliantly familiarising? Yeah, manners. So it's just very slightly off kilter.

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And then that's where Wilde would never have this, of course.

251
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But the reference to making strange noises after you've eaten for him and everyone just sort of, you know, it's a terrible moment.

252
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Oh, he's he's he's broken some rule.

253
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But Nigel Haber is playing in a kind of gleeful way.

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Yeah, it's completely just, I'm loving this. Yeah, but it's a moment that we're wild, doesn't really go.

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He doesn't go over this line. One of the some ways that something like that, but I think it's it's a different way of doing it.

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So what world does I think has people who use the manners so deliberately all the time?

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And when there's violence in wild, it's broken down in some ways,

258
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but also it goes towards melodrama that if you sort of mean the Lord with, you know, been calling on.

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Calling his ex lover, mother of his child.

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This is about calling her, you know, calling his son her, you know, about police and the [INAUDIBLE] and the rest of it.

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She faces love. Yeah, that's a sense which he's lost it at that moment.

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Yeah. So yeah, I think that sense of manners being about power is very strongly that with while I

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think cowered in some ways is interested in manners is etiquette and what you can get,

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where you and what you can get away with. And he's in some ways pushing against also what you can do in the theatre.

265
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Hmm. So how much bad behaviour can have that bad behaviour includes?

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I mean, I love the way that the play doesn't age because in one sense, there will never be a time when it is OK to dump your bride on the honeymoon.

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You know it's going to happen. It's going to happen. W yeah, exactly.

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It's. So it's a wonderful kind of the fact that you know, he's it so well, but you you fundamentally don't care about them very, very quickly.

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So that whole thing of how can you judge Amanda when actually fun sibling victory?

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Immensely annoying. Very, very quickly. Oh, it's really interesting.

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He writes. He's using a form that's usually quite moral and usually about sorting the good from the bad,

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either according to manners or according to morals or something.

273
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And he he breaks all the rules and you need comedy. What do you mean?

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What form will come with you? I suppose I mean comedy. I also mean theatre at that point.

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I mean, comedy so often what the standard form of so often in comedy is.

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There are the older generation is booking the younger generation.

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In this case, the older generation, it's going to be like dumping younger generations.

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Know, though, that as we said, that generation gap isn't necessarily meant to be there.

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But do you sort of mean not love in that play? Is outside the rules?

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Hear a Catholic, which is they don't recognise the so they're still married.

281
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But in that sense, it's not so to mean that marriage in I mean,

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he basically takes the most fun one, the most fundamental kind of social bonding structure,

283
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the institution and so on, and sort of reverses all its families in some ways or just cast its aside as irrelevant.

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Yes.

285
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So yes, if in that sense, he's taking some of the most fundamental rules of the genre and then turning them into something a little bit different?

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Yeah, that might be a note to end on. Sadly, we've run out of time,

287
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but it's been absolutely brilliant here in both of you kind of having this discussion straight off the back of the energy of watching it.

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So thank you so much for giving us time for this tonight. Thank you.

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Yes, and thank you. Thank you. I.