Private Lives - Royal Exchange Theatre

Steve John Shepherd and Jill Halfpenny as Elyot and Amanda.

IMAGINE your horror when you go on your honeymoon only to discover your ex-partner, who you enjoyed a classic love/hate relationship with, has booked exactly the same romantic getaway.

So it is with Elyot and Amanda in Noel Coward’s still brilliant Private Lives, a Michelin star comedy that provides the perfect antidote to the gloomy times in which we currently live.

Both have made spectacularly wrong choices when it come to their partners, with Elyot having chosen to marry the incurably irritating Sibyl while Amanda has chosen Victor, a doting husband who also seems t have had some sort of charisma bypass.

Elyot and Amanda’s chance meeting is the catalyst for passionate rows and the most memorable physical fracas, which I have no intention of divulging here.

Steve John Shepherd and Jill Halfpenny make for the most appealing of double acts as Elyot and Amanda, displaying an exemplary comic timing matched by Daniel Millar and Shazia Nicholls as Victor and Sibyl.

From start to finish Blanche McIntyre’s production is a perfectly paced and pitched absolute hoot and its remarkable how fresh Private Lives still sounds.

This is shaping up to be the most memorable season for a very long time at a theatre that’s been entertaining us for the past half century.

Productions of this calibre deserve sell out runs. I for one, could quite willingly, watch it again.

Star rating - 4.5 out of 5. Tickets are available from www.royalexchange.co.uk.

Photo - Johan Persson.