Invasion of Privacy

APPLAUSE interrupts dialogue from Private Lives more than 20m times, but the cheers, giggles and whistles don't necessary follow Noel Coward's lines. Instead, the audience listens to Elyot Chase (Richard Burton) ask Amanda (Elizabeth Taylor), his ex-wife whether she thinks they'll ever marry each other again. "I don't know, "Taylor drawls, as the audience grows increasingly expectant, "Marriage scares me really."

Knowing laughter begins, as if one needs more than a superficial knowledge to recognize the all-too-obvious similarities between life and art: Liz and Dick were married, just like Elyot and Amanda, Liz and Dick were divorced, just like Elyot and Amanda, could Liz and Dick get back together again? Actually, they could, and did, and their second marriage ended badly, too. But if audience reaction serves as any barometer, then America hungers for a third chapter when Burton and Taylor first kiss in Act One, the audience whistles and cheers, as if it intends to will a romantic rapprochement between two of this country's most talked about celebrities.

Throughout the evening, the audience thrusts itself so insistently and so happily on the actors that Private Lives becomes less a revival of a wonderful play, than a theatrical event of the campiest sort that proves more than a little embarrassing. Apparently, Taylor and Burton's private lives are all too public, and everyone involved--from the two principals to the balcony whistlers--seems excited about the possibility of making the cover of an upcoming People magazine.

NOEL COWARD, however, belongs anywhere but in People. His plays combine wry, sophisticated wit, elegant characters and light, measured farce. Coward relies on the English language--not only what words express clearly and openly, but also what they hide and subtly suggest. A line as unpromising as "don't quibble. Sybil" conveys much with its brevity, sound and the actor's accompanying expressions and pauses.

Five years before Elyot meets the disagreeing Sybil, and before Private Lives begins, Elyot and Amanda divorce. As the play opens, the two are newly remarried, he to Sybil (Katryn Walker), she to Victor Prynne (John Cullum). Embarrassingly enough, both couples honeymoon in Deauville. Worse yet, their respective suites share a balcony. But Elyot is as unsuited for the flighty, girlish Sybil as Amanda is for the formal, gentlemanly Victor. While Amanda and Elyot rediscover their old love. Coward argues, always humorously, that passion often blends both tenderness and hostility. And the tender and hostile moments in the Private Lives mark the play's most charming and comically effective scenes.

Most of director Milton Katselas' staging is successful. The final act's breakfast scene, with the varyingly confused, offended or bemused Chases and Prynnes, proceeds as smoothly as it does quickly. Katselas also deftly balances the opening exchanges between the four; their exits and entrances are well-timed, although slowed by the audience's initial reactions to Burton (who looks graceful and distinguished in a tuxedo, though his shoe-heels are about three inches too high for the 1930s of Private Lives) and Taylor, who enters confidently in a low-cut nightgown and robe. But, in keeping with the tone of the evening. Taylor soon changes into a Theoni Aldredge purple sequined gown that, were the actors not a hundred feet away, would undoubtedly become her violet eyes.

Aldredge's costumes, which tend towards satin and well-tailored fits, flatter the actors well, as do David Mitchell's sets and Tharon Musser's skillful lighting Mitchell creates a lovely art-deco Parisian living room, with a satin chaise, modernist artwork and large, slanted windows. And Katselas also surrounds his principals with accomplished performers Cullum, who won Tony Awards for Shenandoah and On the Twentieth Century, blends naivete with an almost treacly love for Amanda to create a character who seems unbeatable despite his efforts to the contrary. With a breathless voice, and a fey, almost stupid demeanor. Walker's Sybil seems both attractive and repellent. Much of Private Lives' fun results from watching Sybil evolve as the play unfolds. Walker's confidence--and gestures that skirt the melodramatic but manage to remain realistic firmly anchor her character, if only in space. But as good as Walker is, she can't compete with Taylor and Burton, which is not to say that Taylor and Burton are all that good.

TAYLOR's performance, like her voice, is uneven. She drops octaves at will, often with little purpose, and the almost sing-song nature of her voice makes her sound at one moment girlish, at another manly. Yet often her guttural inflections serve her well, as she threatens either Sybil or Elyot. Burton fares better, for he avoids Taylor's tendency to slip into broad, overstated gestures. However, Burton's disinterested demeanor occasionally seems to reflect a boredom with his part. And his and Taylor's hostile interludes lead to the play's most unintentionally humorous moments.

Perhaps the possibilities overwhelmed Katselas. Before Amanda and Elyot battle each other, Katselas shamelessly tantalizes the audience. Years before, we learn. Amanda broke a few records over Elyot's head. So Katselas sends Taylor to the gramophone again and again to pick up a few records casually, with a suggestive tilt of her head and a furrowed brow. When Taylor and Burton finally go at it--not only with records but also pillows, and newspapers--it's as if one were watching a parody of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (though that movie was gracious enough to avoid airborne and partially chewed grapes). Other scenes seem misdirected and heavy-handed. "I was in love with a woman in South Africa," Elyot admits. "Did you make love to her in the bush," Amanda returns, awkwardly toying with a banana, in the unlikely event that her suggestive inflection escaped notice.

BUT EVEN the human finds its proper place on the camp scale, somewhere between Taylor's jazzy, slightly confused solo dance--arms and pearls flying--and her seemingly willful acrobatics on the chaise. As she kicks her heels high, her silk evening pajamas gradually reveal her entire leg. The leg, incidentally, looks almost as good as Taylor apparently thinks it does.

"I can't get over how funny this play is. I didn't expect it to be funny," one theatergoer said as he left. Chances are, for better and for worse, many won't be able to "get over" the fun of watching Taylor and Burton on stage, either in person, or on the screen. Television's ubiquitous Entertainment Tonight was at a recent performance, filming highlights, ready to scoop People magazine with a story on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's--rather, Noel Coward's--Private Lives.