AMANDA: Darling, I believe you’re talking nonsense.

ELYOT: So is everyone else in the long run. Let’s be superficial and pity the poor Philosophers. Let’s blow trumpets and squeakers, and enjoy the party as much as we can, like very small, quite idiotic school-children. Let’s savour the delight of the moment. Come and kiss me, darling, before your body rots, and worms pop in and out of your eye sockets.

Amanda has just married Victor and gone on her honeymoon. Elyot has just married Sybil and gone on his honeymoon. To the same hotel. Elyot and Amanda are about to find out all over again why they got divorced in the first place.

The censors did their best to ban the play when Coward wrote it in 1930 (as a vehicle for himself) and it has been refusing to behave for 80 years now. Its wit is definitive, its plotting almost perfect, and its critique of modernity dazzling. The great theatrical adventurer Ralph Myers finally gives himself a directing gig and his task is almost ridiculously pleasurable: to direct Zahra Newman and Toby Schmitz in Private Lives.

Cast (touring season)

Zoe Coombs Marr
Eloise Mignon
Zahra Newman
Toby Schmitz
Toby Truslove

Team (touring season)

By Noël Coward
Director & Set Designer Ralph Myers
Costume Designer Alice Babidge
Lighting Designer Damien Cooper
Composer & Sound Designer Stefan Gregory
Assistant Director Kit Brookman
Stage Manager Eva Tandy
Assistant Stage Manager Mel Dyer
Touring Production Manager Damion Holling
Lighting Realiser/Head LX Chris Page
Sound realisor/Engineer Sarah Davies