Private Lives - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

The original production received mixed reviews. Coward later wrote, "The critics described Private Lives variously as 'tenuous, thin, brittle, gossamer, iridescent, and delightfully daring'. All of which connoted in the public mind cocktails, repartee and irreverent allusions to copulation, thereby causing a gratifying number of respectable people to queue up at the box office." The Times wrote, "What an entertaining play it is!", but wondered if any other performers could bring it off. Allardyce Nicoll called it "amusing, no doubt, yet hardly moving farther below the surface than a paper boat in a bathtub and, like the paper boat, ever in imminent danger of becoming a shapeless, sodden mass." The Manchester Guardian commented, "The audience evidently found it a good entertainment, but Mr. Coward certainly had not flattered our intelligence. The play appears to be based on the theory that anything will do provided it be neatly done." The Observer also thought that the play depended on brilliant acting and thought the characters unrealistic, though "None the less, for a couple of hours they are delicious company when Mr. Coward is master of unceremonious ceremonies." The New Statesman discerned a sad side to the play in its story of a couple who can live neither with nor without each other: "It is not the least of Mr. Coward's achievements that he has ... disguised the grimness of his play and that his conception of love is really desolating."

When the text was published, The Times called it "unreadable", and the The Times Literary Supplement found it "inexpressibly tedious" in print but acknowledged that its effectiveness on stage was "proved by the delight of a theatrical audience." T.E. Lawrence, however, wrote, "The play reads astonishingly well ... superb prose." The editor of The Gramophone greeted Coward and Lawrence's 1930 recording of scenes from the play as a success and added, "I wish that Noel Coward would find time to write a short play for the gramophone, for neither of these extracts has enough completeness to bear indefinite repetition."