Images kindly supplied by Bolton Octagon Theatre
This 1930s comedy comes alive under Tanuja Amarasuriya’s direction, with a lively, talented cast delivering Coward’s wit with precision and charm. Even those new to the playwright’s work will leave laughing and impressed.
If you’re planning a visit to Bolton’s Octagon Theatre, I urge you to get there early. There’s free parking close by, after 6pm, there’s a lively pre-Theatre restaurant and upstairs is a cafe which is warm and welcoming.
On my latest visit there, I enjoyed a bit of time, before the show, to read the programme until taking my seat. I’ve never read or seen the Noel Coward comedy, Private Lives, which is set in the 1930s, so I shared the view that Director Tanuja Amarasuriya wrote. She’s apparently been warned, before she took on the project, that it might be a “dusty old monument”.
As I read her notes I was felt assured when she wrote, “Private Lives satirises the toxicity of marriage as a social custom. The story is set in the 1930s, the World we live in now, in 2025, seems to be losing the tolerance and freedoms we have taken for granted and are being rolled back.”
She went on to say, “These characters are young people in their twenties and thirties working out how to be free and move forward in a precarious World, navigating social expectations.” I was intrigued by how the story might shadow the World we live in today.
The diverse cast hit the ground running, with Chirag Benedict Lobo as Elliot and Sade Malone as one of the newly married couples and Pepter Lunkuse, Amanda, and Ashley Gerlach as the other honeymooning couple. None of the key four missed a beat and delivered Noel Cowards wonderful script with crispness, humour and perfect timing.
The actors are always the stars but it was Coward’s writing that kept this play moving along. I’ve seen it said that the best written songs, poetry or scripts don’t waste a word and that was certainly the case here. No doubt there will be plenty of well read people reading my comments, who already admire Coward’s literature, who won’t laugh at my surprise at home good it was, but the point I’m trying to make, is that even those not acquainted with Noel Coward’s work will enjoy this play.
Say alongside me was a young man who really had no idea what to expect from the show. He was more used to cheering on his team from the terraces but he stood on his feet applauding the talented cast as they took their deserved bows, proving Noel Coward’s clever words in the hands of a clever director and skilful players, is as valid today as when it was written a century ago.
Private Lives runs at Bolton Octagon until September 27: tickets here