Surely, there is vicarious fun for the taking when we are allowed a peep inside other people's private lives, says COLIN HILL, co-director

The play may be nearly eighty years old, but there is still a refreshing, comic irreverence about Private Lives that never seems to age. The language bubbles along with laugh after laugh from even the audience in our rehearsal room.

Constructed in a weekend of recovery from a non-critical ailment, Coward composed what many regard as his cleverest and funniest script. Although performed at the GWT before, in 1955 and 1970, there will be, I believe, a refreshing newness for our audiences about this production of the play.

We have a new director, Gill Grubb who is relishing the challenge and needs little assistance from me as her directing pillion passenger. I am sure that all who come to see this show will be impressed by her creative input in both the performance of the cast and her staging.

The cast of five includes Sarah Tortell, who is making her GWT debut in the role of Amanda Prynne. Lee Devlin, a GWT debutant himself last June in Wild Oats, when he played the role of Jack Rover both in our theatre and on the rocks at The Minack Theatre, plays Elyot Chase, the role Coward originated in the first production of the play. John Wilson, fresh from his excellent performance in The Dresser, discards his fair isle tank-top and his pretence of stage fright to play Victor Prynne, the role first played by a young Laurence Olivier (no challenge there then!). Michelle Scott who appears with John on the cover of the current season's brochure, now plays opposite him as Sibyl Chase, Elyot's unfortunate second wife. Gill Meason swaps her position behind the Box Office counter to play the irascible French maid, Louise. Not a word of English passes her lips, but her French is impeccable, even if it does contain some impertinent criticism of her unexpected visitors.

Do join us during the run of the show. I will be more than happy to make your acquaintance. I am sure you will experience great enjoyment from this comedy classic.

BILL BRAY describes private lives that have become extraordinarily familiar.

Our current season presents an interesting collection of plays not always familiar to our audience. That, I believe, is how it should be, with, of course, an occasional well-known piece to spice the brew. And here we have it: the Noël Coward play that "represents his greatest claim to theatrical permanence." Sheridan Morley continues: "Private Lives has a symmetry and durability that have assured it near-constant production in one language or another from the time of its first production in 1930 to the present day, arguably the best light comedy of appalling manners to have been written in the first half of the 20th century."

The genesis of the play is the stuff of legend, so good that it bears repetition. Coward's musical play Bitter-Sweet had been an enormous success in London and New York and late in 1929 he had embarked on a trip to the far east to relax. A sleepless night in Tokyo was filled with an idea for a play for Gertrude Lawrence, the actress who was a childhood friend and to whom Coward had promised a play written for her after the disappointment of not getting the lead in Bitter-Sweet because the part needed a stronger voice.

When Coward got out of bed Private Lives, including the title, was complete in his mind without having yet committed a word to paper. He spent another three weeks as a tourist before a bout of 'flu in Shanghai gave him time to write the play, which he did in four days. After some minor revisions he sent it to Gertrude Lawrence.

Coward later said that the performance on the stage of the newly opened Phoenix Theatre in Charing Cross Road precisely mirrored everything he had in mind during that sleepless night in Tokyo. It was partly rehearsed in a villa on the French Riviera before Coward and Lawrence came to London and the remainder of the cast, Laurence Olivier and Adrienne Allen, joined them.

When Olivier was offered the part of Victor he recalls that he went to see Coward and was given a script. "I went back and said, in all seriousness, that I would rather play Elyot - he nearly died with laughter and told me not to be a bloody fool. I needed a success at that stage of my acting career and he would get me fifty pounds a week for playing Victor."

It was, of course, an enormous success with that original cast in a limited London run. It later went to New York where the notices were ecstatic, unlike the London critics who tended to be more than a bit sniffy about light comedies. They failed to recognise that this comedy had a serious subtext about marriage, love, relationships and the whole damned thing! The critic of The Daily Telegraph that perennial beacon of good taste, dismissed it with: "They smash gramophone records over each other's heads and roll on the floor still thumping, kicking, possibly biting. Do people of apparent breeding really do these things?"

If you have the DVD of the Gertrude Lawrence film biography, Star!, you will discover an extract from the opening scene of Private Lives with impersonations of Gertrude and Noël as played by Julie Andrews and Daniel Massey.

Our imminent production is the third GWT staging of this inimitable comedy and it is most unlikely to be the last.

Book early for what will predictably be a sell out!