PRIVATE LIVES, Writers’ Theatre Chicago. Noel Coward based his flawless 1930 script on more than just a road map of the heart. As Michael Halberstam’s adept staging artfully reveals, Private Lives continually transforms one fascinating tension into another in this tale of two ill-matched couples honeymooning in Deauville. Amanda and Elyot, embodying wealthy eccentricity and jazz age abandon, are a divorced couple who end up deserting their new younger spouses to reunite, fleeing to Paris for a second chance at love. In dialogue that shifts from gossamer to caustic in a trice, Coward masterfully depicts the guilt that convulses these old flames after they desert their new partners. But Coward deftly reverses our sense of remorse for them: Sybil and Victor are horribly right for each other. The witty rebels win, if only by default.
