[NEohioPAL]Berko review: PRIVATE LIVES/GLTF

[Roy Berko]

‘PRIVATE LIVES’ DELIGHTS AT GREAT LAKES

Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association)

--THE TIMES NEWSPAPERS--

Lorain County Times--Westlaker Times--Lakewood News
Times--Olmsted-Fairview Times	


Playwright Noel Coward is the crown prince of
Restoration comedy, in which the battle of the sexes
is subjected to amusing scrutiny in order not merely
to entertain but to reveal the human compromises,
treacheries, and incapacities that lie beneath the
mannered sophistication of its protagonists.  In a
good production, the audience is both entertained and
enlightened.

Coward’s ‘PRIVATE LIVES,’ now in production by the
Great Lakes Theatre Festival, clearly illustrates what
happens when a blending of a well written play, a
brilliant cast, a talented technical team, and a
director who both understands the play and has the
creativity to wrench everything from the script, come
together.  And, as intended, it leaves the audience
entertained and enlightened.

It is the 1920's and divorcees Elyot and Amanda are
honeymooning in the same French hotel with their new
spouses, Sibyl and Victor.  Inevitably they meet
--they are, after all, staying in rooms with adjoining
balconies. Realizing that they are made for each
other, Elyot and Amanda abandon their new husband and
wife without a backward glance and run away to Paris. 
There they discover their original true love and then
rediscover just why they were unable to live together
in the first place, and then discover their original
true love, and (you get the point).  Sound like a
comedy of errors?  It is!  A delightful comedy of
slapstick, double entendres, and hysterically funny
lines and deeds.

In order for the play to work we must fall in love
with Elyot and Amanda and root for them to find true
love, or at least not kill each other with love.   We
must realize that Elyot really doesn’t believe that
"some women should be struck regularly - like gongs"
and that love really isn’t “best when it is wide, kind
and undramatic.”   We must endorse Amanda's words, "I
think very few people are completely normal, really,
deep down in their private lives."

Under Victoria Bussert’s finely tuned directing, we
get everything we need to make the play
work....empathy, humor, perfect comedy timing, the
right degree of stylization blended with drama, and
farce blending well with melodrama.  Her staging of
the fight scenes and a hysterical dance sequence, all
show a keen awareness of what it takes to delight an
audience while sticking to the intent and purpose of
the author.

While the Cleveland Play House traverses the country
in search of actors with mediocre results, GLTF
plucked its perfect cast from the local talent pool. 
And, what a cast it is!

Noel Coward may not have known an Andrew May would
come along, but he seemingly wrote the part of Elyot
for May.  May is a laugh riot as the pompous, ill
tempered, “do-and-later-think-of-what-you-just-did”
lout.    May covers the world of comic devices.  With
eyes bulging, voice reaching ear-splitting pitches,
body quivering, mumphering articulation, mid-sentence
stuttering, charging around the stage like a bull in
the proverbial China shop, May develops an endearing
character.  

As Amanda, Eloyt’s emotional foil, Laura Perotta is
wonderful.  She uses her body as a comic tool.  In the
scene where she realizes that Elyot is on an adjoining
balcony Perotta becomes like a lizard on a wall,
scaling and shrinking in order to see and yet not be
seen.  In the delightful fight scenes with May,
Perotta lets totally lose, giving life and limb for
the comedy effects.  Her Amanda is a combination of
loving, hateful, shallow, caring, manipulative and
emotional vulnerability.  This is a career highlight
performance.

Kelly Sullivan and Scott Plate, as the cast-off
partners are also wonderful.   They both develop clear
and delightful characters.  Their play-closing scene
is a masterpiece of hysteria.    In her brief
appearances on stage, Adina Bloom, as the maid Louise,
milks laughs with ease.

There is a tradition in the theatre that kids and
animals can  be disasters on stage.   In this
production, even the dog (who is not identified in the
program) performs with gleeful perfection.

John Ezell’s gorgeous sets, Charlotte Yetman’s
costumes, Mary Jo Dondlinger’s lighting, Stan Kozak’s
sound effects are all totally on target.

CAPSULE JUDGEMENT: Great Lakes Theatre Festival’s
PRIVATE LIVES is a must-see theatrical treat.  It’s
too bad it is only scheduled to run two weeks.  If
this were an open ended run it would be a sure fire
hit that would play to happily full houses for a long,
long, long time!

For tickets to ’PRIVATE LIVES,’ which runs through
February 1,  call 216-241-6000 or 800-766-6048.


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