Word: amanda
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Coward's Lives is organized in an unusual and precarious manner for a situation comedy: a threadbare plot is sprinkled with "life-lines" (guffaw-inducing one-liners) for the major characters, Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne, and occassional emergency appearances of the play's idiotic and insufferable secondary characters (Victor Prynne, Sybil Chase, and Louise). The first act introduces the entire plot: Amanda and Elyot, once married and later divorced, fall in love again while honeymooning with their newly found spouses, Victor and Sybil--two cretin-like characters representing the very best in English shallowness. There is no further development...
Arnott, in order to squeeze the maximum wit out of Coward's insipid manuscript, has worked out what appears to be a second-by-second computer program for verbal inflections, facial contortions, physical maneuvers, and furniture kicking. During the extensive arguments and love bouts of Elyot and Amanda, the play's spirited and engaging cynics, the precise sense of timing turns insults, cigarette lighting, and record smashing into high comic art. At times, Arnott's exhaustive direction and his actors' slavish execution reaches self-parody: it is worthwhile, during the course of the play, to study carefully the director...
Noel Coward himself acted in the London production of Private Lives is the 1930's (as Elyot), and he found it a trying, though successful, experience: "It was more tricky and full of pitfalls than anything I have ever attempted as an actor." Hutson and Lewis, as Elyot and Amanda, are a sharp, strong, and attractive duo who avoid most of Coward's worst pitfalls--abysmal dialogue, kitschy scenes, and trite psychology--and maximize Coward's well hidden strengths--the parody of English manners and social institutions, the art of verbal thrust and counterthrust, the sharp criticism of women...
...Liza Minnelli, Josephine Baker and Capucine. The performers, together with ordinary mannequins, would stage a kind of high-budget vaudeville called "Le Grand Divertissement à Versailles." The money? Ah, yes, patrons like the Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild would angel the operation, and people like Amanda Burden, Princess Grace, the Charles Revsons and Karim Aga Khan would lend their glamorous names as sponsors. Last week it all happened, more or less as planned. But as with the 1770 fireworks, there was rain on the big parade. In fact, the preparations preceding the show demonstrated just...
Under Pam Berlin's adept direction, there are several inspired performances drawn from a solid cast. As Evie, Anya, Ilse, and Ginnie, Amanda Gari is impressively versatile; the rapid-fire appearance in Act II of all her characters--accomplished beautifully with skillful costume changes--is a virtual tour de force. Gari has a lovely voice, and comfortably takes command of the stage. She is balanced by Steve Kolzak, a fine Littlechap who possesses a type of intense, internal energy reminiscent of Anthony Newley's personal style. This quality is reflected in Kolzak's voice, effective whether he is singing...