HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Hendersonville Theatre is now staging a run on “Private Lives,” Noël Coward’s 1930 comedy of manners. Despite the best efforts of the Hendersonville team, the play is 96 years old… and shows. Read our review for more.
Catch “Private Lives” at 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday, and 3 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, March 13-29, at Hendersonville Theatre, 229 S. Washington St., Hendersonville. Find tickets here.
“Private Lives” is directed by Michelle Newman and stars Colin Grube as Elyot Chase, Gina McDaniel as Sibyl Chase, Marilyn Bailey as Amanda Prynne and Elijah York as Victor Prynne. Shayne Gardner, Josh Luria, Alannah Updegraff and Aaron Ybarra feature as The Louises. Stage management and props are by MJ Greene, set design by Dakota Mann, lighting design by Newman, intimacy choreography by Amanda McLoughlin and construction led by Don Schwartz, with support by Doug Sparks, Earl Lang and Mann.
Clunky comedy
“Private Lives” follows two newly-married couples, the Chases and the Prynnes, who have embarked on their honeymoons at the same resort. Unfortunately for everyone’s marital bliss, Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne used to be married to each other, and their reunion spurs insecurities and sparks alike.
Coward’s play was met with mixed reception upon its premiere, and time has not improved the material. In my opinion, the reason to resuscitate classic works of theatre is to spotlight some resonance the work has in modern day, either through unexpected connections to the present or by serving as a portal to an interesting past. It’s one of the reasons Shakespeare is still performed the world over, even though the scenarios presented in his work are ostensibly mired in the Elizabethan era.
“Private Lives” is not Shakespeare, but nor is it “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” the 1962 Edward Albee play, which also explores marital difficulties clashing with the innocence and insecurity of young people. However, unlike “Private Lives,” “Virginia Woolf?” still feels bitingly modern, even though it, too, is a decades-old work. The word that kept coming to my mind during “Private Lives” is stodgy. The play is dully outmoded.
Just as “Private Lives” fails to grasp onto relevance in 2026, the cast seemed to struggle with conveying the 1930s. Grube, in particular, adopted an affected 30s lilt and forced laugh throughout, which was distracting. Perhaps it was just the exhaustion of the end-of-weekend matinee I saw – there is a lot of dialogue in “Private Lives,” and Sunday was the last of four straight days of performing – but Grube flubbed lines throughout the show, which inadvertently exacerbated the false feeling of his affectation.
Bailey, with whom Grube shared the most dialogue, was much more naturalistic in her accent and line readings, which was welcome, if inconsistent with her costars. However, outside of their mismatched period efforts, Bailey and Grube did have solid chemistry as their hot-and-cold divorcees. Any measure of success with “Private Lives” is contingent on the audience buying the history between Elyot and Amanda, which Bailey and Grube successfully sold.
Their characters’ new partners, meanwhile, are given much less to do in the script, but their actors still made an impression. York was solid as the stern Victor. His measured performance was effective at communicating the antithesis of Victor to Walter, and he was fun to watch with Bailey. McDaniel, as the shrill, childish Sibyl, was a little more uneven. At times, she was very amusing, crafting off-putting character tics like a genuinely bizarre laugh. Other times, she leaned into Sibyl’s obnoxious characterization to the point of discomfort: the character cries often, and McDaniel committed to those tears loudly, but it wasn’t funny.
Before intermission, “Private Lives” ticked along like a reliable clock. The scenes bordered on redundant thanks to Coward’s intentionally repetitious script, but for those the material worked for, the show was moving sturdily. After intermission, however, the energy picks way up, before crashing in a lethargic finale.
Mann’s set design shone in the second half of “Private Lives,” which convincingly conveys a 30s-style apartment. One of the best bits in the show was a creaky phonograph, which members of The Louises – a cadre of waitstaff who were the MVPs of Private Lives; Gardner, Luria, Updegraff and Ybarra have no lines, but their wordless pantomime and comic timing was terrific – would crank at disruptive times for the quibbling couples.
Despite those strong visuals and the boost of the additional cast members, by the final minutes of the Sunday performance, all four principles seemed tired of the material themselves. Misread lines, accent inconsistency and a general gloom infected York, Grube, Bailey and McDaniel by the end. It was a bummer ending to a show with few highs.
That said, when the lights went up, my audience seemed very amused. “Private Lives” may work better for you, as it did for them. Find tickets and more information at www.hendersonvilletheatre.org/private-lives.
