Summer is Shakespeare season in the Lehigh Valley during DeSales University's annual Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, but this theatrical extravaganza doesn't leave out the masterful playwrights of intervening centuries. The scintillating wit of Noël Coward's Private Lives opens at PSF this month, full of art deco glamour and repartee.
The plot revolves around a couple who have been divorced for five years and have each found someone new to marry. “They're both honeymooning in France at a posh hotel,” director Dennis Razze says, “and happen to be in adjoining hotel rooms.” On their decadent French hotel balconies they discover one another and find their love rekindling. Of course, their new spouses are none too pleased and pursue them to a Paris apartment where the second act includes both romance and mayhem.
“One reason audiences take pleasure in it,” Razze says, “is that they see a reflection of their own marriage. Even the best squabble sometimes, then make up. That's part of the rhythm of marriage.” It's fun when it's other people doing the squabbling, and doing it with the great eloquence of Coward's dialogue.
Coward came from poverty, but his success as an artist took him into the world of the wealthy, whose fancies and foibles made fodder for his work. Composer, actor, playwright, he did it all. Bedridden in Shanghai with the flu, Coward penned Private Lives in four days and sent it straight to actress and friend Gertrude Lawrence, with whom he starred in its debut. It's a glimpse into the private lives of the upper class, their sophisticated bickering taking place in extravagant gowns on a background of opulent interiors.
Actors Eleanor Handley and Luigi Sottile return to PSF for this production. Make it a lighthearted evening to laugh at the mishaps of marriage.
$25–$39 | Showtimes vary | Desales University | 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley | 610.282.9455 | pashakespeare.org
