Love, Lust and Cosmopolitan Fatigue

24th July 2012

Love, Lust and Cosmopolitan Fatigue

Silo presents
PRIVATE LIVES
Shane Bosher directs Noël Coward’s genre-defining comedy

Silo gleefully grabs an axe and sets to the Corbusier, trashing apartments and relationships when they take on the original rom-com PRIVATE LIVES at Q Theatre from September 6th. This love-to-hate-you romp for thinking people is pumped full of the lacerating wit that the likes of Ricky Gervais could only dream. Noël Coward’s celebration of modernity, disposable relationships and withering put-downs is about to be given a wild contemporary makeover by the company notorious. Expect ridiculous pleasure.

There are only two things wrong with Amanda and Elyot’s honeymoon. Her husband and his wife. Once explosively wedded to each other, now quite happily divorced, Amanda and Elyot find themselves trapped in adjoining hotel suites – where they both happen to be honeymooning with their new spouses. Bugger.

Will they fuck, kill or remarry?

EVERYONE knows a “can’t be with them, can’t live without them” couple like Amanda and Elyot. History and literature are riddled with them: Antony and Cleopatra, Carrie and Mr. Big, Bogie and Bacall, Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, Bridget Jones and Daniel Cleaver. In a coup of sexual chemistry and dangerous alchemy, Silo has lined up Go Girls’ Matt Whelan and Mia Blake as the love-to-hate-you divorcees.

PRIVATE LIVES is widely acclaimed as Noël Coward’s masterpiece but has a bit of a wicked history. Struck down by the flu and confined to a Shanghai hotel room, Coward wrote the play in only four days as a vehicle for himself and his best mate Gertrude Lawrence. Prim, buttoned-up critics panned the play’s 1930 premiere and the Lord Chamberlain tried to ban it. But audiences couldn’t be deterred, devouring the slap-happy showdown of wits. Held up as a hallmark of Coward’s writing style, the play is now revered for its definitive wit, perfect plotting and jagged sophistication and this year alone was revived on Broadway.

Over its 80 year history, a succession of top-shelf talents have lined up to play the glamorous, rich and reckless heroine Amanda. Mia Blake will step into stilettos previously worn by legends Kim Cattrall, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins and Maggie Smith.

Silo’s inimitable take on one of the greatest comedies of all time builds on the company’s reputation of rejigging classic work for modern audiences. Memorable productions such as THE WOMEN, THE THREEPENNY OPERA and TARTUFFE have all caused stampedes at the box office, with audiences celebrating the company’s wild interventions.

Silo regulars Sophie Henderson and Sam Snedden team up to play the jilted spouses in Shane Bosher’s production, with the cast strutting the boards in the ultra-chic fashion musings of so-hot-right-now stylist Charlotte Rust.

This is PRIVATE LIVES in the 21st Century. In a world where pratfalls are at least as important as posing, audiences need look no further than their dirty martinis for a wickedly good time at the theatre this September.

“Wonderfully funny and fabulously sexy, Private Lives has lost none of its allure.”
– THE TELEGRAPH

PRVIATE LIVES plays at Q Theatre, 305 Queen Street, Auckland
6th – 29th September, 2012
Monday - Tuesday at 7pm; Wednesday through Saturday at 8pm
OPEN DIALOGUE: Monday 10th September, 6pm
TWENTYSOMETHING: Thursday 13th September
Tickets: $25.00 - $55.00
Tickets available through Q Theatre – www.qtheatre.co.nz or 09 309 9771

ENDS

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