Donald Cook and Tallulah Bankhead in Private Lives, 1948. Photo by Vandamm. New York Public Library, New York.
Revival 1
Playbill cover
Donald Cook and Tallulah Bankhead, 1948. Photo by Vandamm. New York Public Library, New York.
Presented by John C. Wilson, directed by Martin Manulis, and with scenic design by Charles Elson, the first Broadway revival of Noël Coward’s Private Lives took place seventeen years after Coward himself introduced Elyot Chase to New York audiences. The new Elyot for this production was Donald Cook. Amanda was portrayed by Tallulah Bankhead.
The play opened at the Plymouth Theatre on 4 October 1948, following a year-long tour with Bankhead and Cook as the leads. The New York season ran for eight months, closing on 07 May 1949, after 248 performances.
With this production, Therese Quadri was reviving her role of Louise, the maid, having created the role in the 1931 Broadway production.
Brooks Atkinson, reviewing the play in the New York Times (5 October 1948) was full of praise for the production, especially Tallulah Bankhead’s performance.
Unpinioned from the two-headed eagle that last seized her in New York,* Our Tallulah is in full cry again—no holes barred in Mr. Coward’s sinful escapade ... bellowing, strutting and mugging, but also looking very rapturous and coquettish when it suits her ... No one can make the transition from high to low comedy quite as impulsively as she can, and always in the interest of a good performance ... Under Martin Manulis’ direction, the performance is taut and racy, and the third act in particular is shrewdly arranged. Charles Elson, the scene designer, has housed Mr. Coward’s evil notion in becoming splendor. To withstand a full-guaged Bankhead performance, the scenery has to be sturdy, also. For Our Tallulah is in top form in an expertly written antic.
*Tallulah had previously been seen on Broadway as the Queen in The Eagle Has Two Heads in 1947, hence the allusion in Atkinson’s opening comments
Revival 2
Playbill cover
From Playbill
The next Broadway revival took place in 1969 at the Billy Rose Theatre. Produced by David Merrick, directed by Stephen Porter, with scenic and lighting design by James Tilton, and costumes by Joe Eula and Barbara Matera Ltd., it opened on 4 December 1969, tranferring to the Broadhurst Theatre on 27 April 1970. It closed on 30 May 1970 having achieved 198 performances.
Interestingly, in June 1968, Private Lives played a week-long off-Broadway season at the Theater de Lys, with Elaine Stritch as Amanda and Russell Nype as Elyot. Stritch and Nype had previously performed together in Leroy Anderson’s 1958 Broadway musical Goldilocks, for which Nype had won a Tony Award. The production was a huge flop. By all accounts Stritch was in fine form—‘refreshingly unlyrical and un-British’ wrote Dan Sullivan in the New York Times (20 May 1968)—it was Elyot that was the problem. In fact Nype was Stritch’s third Elyot since rehearsals began. According to Stritch, ‘she couldn’t carry the show alone’ and Nype ‘couldn’t cut Coward’. (New York Times, 23 June 1968)
The cast for the 1969 revival comprised:
According to Clive Barnes in the New York Times (5 October 1969), Stephen Porter’s production of Private Lives was ‘gorgeous’, ‘dazzling’ and ‘sweetly elegant’. As Amanda, Tammy Grimes was ‘outrageously appealing’, playing the role with a ‘mid-Atlantic twang, which sounds just right and terribly, terribly twenties’. Brian Bedford’s Elyot was a ‘delight’, ‘He plops words into space with the diffident deliberateness of a man tossing pebbles into a pool’. Tammy Grimes won a Tony Award for her performance.
Revival 3
Playbill cover
From Playbill
In 1975 John Gielgud brough his 1972 London production to Broadway. Produced by Arthur Cantor by arrangement with H.M. Tennent Ltd. Sets were by Anthony Powell, and costumes by Germinal Rangal and Beatrice Dawson. Lighting was by H.R. Poindexter. Following try-out performances in Los Angeles and Boston, the play opened in New York at the 46th Street Theatre on 6 February 1975, where it played until 26 April 1975, notching up 92 performances.
Under the heading ‘Private Lives, Still Surprising, Returns’, Clive Barnes in the New York Times (7 October 1975) was full of praise for John Gielgud’s direction and the acting of two leads. He pronounced Maggie Smith ‘a perfectly adorable and poutingly naughty Amanda’, while John Standing ‘made Elyot into a sort of lounge lizard with a darting tongue, a confidently smooth-scaled complexion and a usefully useless manner’.
Maggie Smith was awarded the Outer Critics Circle Award for her performance as Amanda. This was not Smith’s first Coward play in the USA. In 1971 she had played Gilda in Design for Living at the Center Theatre in Los Angeles, with Robert Stephens as Otto and Denholm Elliott as Leo. And in 1977, she was Judith Bliss in a revival of Hay Fever at the Stratford Festival in Ontario.
Revival 4
Advertising flyer
Playbill cover
Eleven years later Elizabeth Theatre Group, a production company organised by Hollywood movie star Elizabeth Taylor and Zev Bufman, staged a new revival of Private Lives as a vehicle for Taylor and her ex-husband Richard Burton. Directed by Milton Katselas, with sets by David Mitchell, costumes by Theoni V. Aldredge, and lighting by Tharon Musser, it opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on 8 May 1983. It closed on 17 July 1983 after only 63 performances.
By all accounts this revival was nothing more than a ‘calculated business venture’. As Frank Rich (New York Times, 9 May 1983) goes on to say: ‘In this version ... there’s no attempt to mine the gold beneath the text—or to make the most of the on-the-surface dross. Instead we get an intermittent effort by the stars to create the fan-magazine fantasy that their own offstage private lives dovetail neatly with Coward’s story of a divorced couple who rekindle their old passion after meeting by chance on their second honeymoons.’ While Burton’s mellifuous delivery scored him a few laughs, Taylor managed to mangle most of her lines, her voice either a ‘campy screech’ or a ‘Southern-accented falsetto’. The story of this ill-fated revival is well documented in Richard Laxton’s 2013 tele-movie Burton & Taylor, with Dominic West and Helena Bonham Carter as the stars.
Revival 5
Playbill cover
Ad from Private Lives playbill, 1992
In 1992 Joan Collins brought her London production to Broadway. Produced by Charles H. Duggan by arrangement with Michael Codron, it featured an entirely new supporting cast and crew. Arvin Brown was now the director, with sets by Loren Sherman, costumes by William Ivey Long, and lighting by Richard Nelson. Running for just 37 performances, it played at the Broadhurst Theatre from 20 February 1992 to 22 March 1992.
The cast comprised:
According to Frank Rich in the New York Times (21 February 1992), Joan Collins disappointed as Amanda. She lacked the necessary sex appeal and her vocal range was narrow. Nevertheless, despite her limitations as an actress, she was ‘mildly bitchy’ and ‘good natured’. Simon Jones as Elyot gave a ‘totally neutered farcical performance’ thereby ‘robbing his leading lady of an erotic partner with whom she might alternatively spark and spar’. All in all, Arvin Brown’s production, though content with ‘mining the work’s superficial details’, was brisk but mononous.
Further revivals
Richard Rodgers Theatre, New York, 28 April 2002—1 September 2002, with Lindsay Duncan and Alan Rickman
Music Box Theatre, New York, 17 November 2011—31 December 2011, with Kim Cattrall and Paul Gross
