Sam Snedden (left), Sophie Henderson, Matt Whelan and Mia Blake deftly evoke the tensions between hedonistic excess and pompous propriety. Photo / Supplied
Director Shane Bosher has created an emphatically contemporary interpretation of Private Lives, designed to introduce a new generation of theatre-goers to Noel Coward's scintillating wit and exquisite sense of structure.
The updating may have diminished the musicality of Coward's language but the local references raise plenty of laughs and an
edgy post-modern pastiche is achieved by having delightfully old-fashioned words like "shilly-shallying" and "slatternly" floating about in a world filled with iPads and trance dancing.
The modernisation is carried off with aplomb but the production somehow seems out of tune with the current mood of austerity - it struck me as ironic that such an unabashed celebration of the idle rich behaving badly should open on the same day President Obama issued a clarion call for a new era of responsible citizenship.
Similar feelings might have arisen when the play premiered a few months after the 1929 Wall Street crash and the programme notes include a quotation from Coward suggesting that merriment, finesse and glamour offer the perfect antidote to "the grim patina of these dire times".
Certainly anyone looking for a sophisticated brand of escapist entertainment will not be disappointed by this enchanting and wickedly funny show.
