Private Lives

A few more exciting reviews

Daily Mail : "This is a gorgeous, glorious production of Private Lives, just bitchy enough to be modern, yet old-fashioned enough to have a three-part form. "

"All four principals are superb. Mr Macfadyen's Elyot is greedily  nonchalant about other people's feelings."

Telegraph :"Wonderfully funny and fabulously sexy, Private Lives has lost none of its allure."

What's on Stage : "There have not been that many outstanding revivals of Private Lives since Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens tore strips off each other, but this one has a freshness and elan that still takes you by surprise and honours both the musicality of Coward’s perfect prose and his brittle humanity."

London Evening Standard : "in the key roles, Kim Cattrall and Matthew Macfadyen have what might blithely be termed chemistry — though in fact it’s closer to particle physics, all energetic collisions and strong nuclear force."

"Although it begins on an unexpectedly passive note, this is a satisfying and intelligently conceived production. It’s fluent, very funny and at times dazzlingly well-acted."

Also, photos from the after party at Getty Images and Capitol photos.

Thanks to all the forum members who found the images and reviews.

Here are some of the early reviews as 3 March is press night, or "first night".

The Guardian : "[Macfadyen] is very funny in the beautifully choreographed fight scene."

"It is a clever, funny production that certainly hits the spot."

The Independent : "Escaping entirely from the highly strung, slightly queeny stock portrayal of Elyot, Macfadyen is all the funnier for being so meatily masculine and solid a presence, with an accent that seems to mock its own port-wine plumminess in a manner that reminded me, at times, of Michael Gambon. Playing the bitchy off the butch gives a lovely unfussed, goading aplomb to the character’s drop-dead put-downs."

"Eyre’s splendid production alerts you anew to the fact that Private Lives is a dazzling feat of airborne comic dramaturgy."

The Times : I’ve seen rougher “scenes” than the one these two produce in their posh Paris hideaway — where Anton Lesser nearly tore off Juliet Stevenson’s head, Macfadyen forces a bowlful of ice down Cattrall’s neck — but you never doubt their bond. At first I thought him too aloof, even a bit sullen and stolid, and her too free with the sort of fluttery vowels Marilyn Monroe might have have emitted were she attempting an English accent. But his wit has bite, and she combines allure with the mulishness of a woman who knows her own mind as well as her own body. They’ve received a few hard knocks and will doubtless deliver a few more.