I've never seen a more hysterically funny final exit than the one delivered here by Juliet Stevenson and Anton Lesser. He's Elyot Chase, recently married for the second time, currently sequestered in Paris where his bride can't find him, reunited with his old flame. She's Amanda Prynne, as impulsive, peevish, worldly, immature and alive as Elyot. If you've seen Private Lives before (or even the chunks massacred in Moon Over Buffalo), you'll remember how the couple met by chance on a hotel balcony in Deauville, where they happened to be honeymooning with their new spouses in adjoining rooms. That was the trouble for about half of the evening: I remembered it all too well, and director Philip Franks couldn't find a way to help his cast make the action or byplay fresh. Resident fight director Malcolm Ranson succeeds in kicking us into a higher gear (he's also brilliant in Troilus and Cressida). As a result, the conclusion of Act 2 is wallopingly funny as Stevenson and Lesser tear at each other's throats.
From there, the production sails breezily through Act 3, climaxing with a wonderful tiff between the abandoned spouses. Radiating dogged conventionality, Rebecca Saire as Sibyl Chase and Dominic Rowan as Victor Prynne contrast beautifully with our protagonists. Their sudden and absurd savagery at the end of the evening is as rollicking to behold as the stars' was earlier -- with none of the tedious preamble.
